


The Perfect Time (for their great surrender)

by anamatics



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: 80s AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Diplomacy, F/F, Gen, Spies & Secret Agents, Val Royeaux as Berlin and Paris at once, international government
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-01-25 15:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18577390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: 80s Berlin AU. Josephine is the Antivan Ambassador to an occupied Orlais. Her offices are in a divided Val Royeaux, with Free Orlais to the south and Tevinter-occupied territory to the north. Having gained intelligence which could prove fatal to talks to settle the Age-long dispute between the Black and White Divine, she calls upon an old flame from her past to help her sort out the situation. Enter the Nightingale.





	1. New Years Eve Would Be The Perfect Time (For Their Great Surrender)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic plays fast and loose with Berlin's history during the period of division (events are condensed, altered, and may be slightly out of actual historical fact order) and in some ways incorporates Paris's geography and some historical elements of France into the landscape of Val Royeaux. Like, really, fast and fucking loose. I wanted to write some modern spy thriller bullshit and this is what came out. 
> 
> Events loosely cribbed/discussed in the order of reference:  
> -1968/Year of Global Protest  
> \- Berlin Airlift (somehow this takes place after '68 when in reality it was 20 years before)  
> \- the Berlin Wall [like as a whole and as a thing]  
> \- WW2

_Chapter 17 – The 4 th Nevarran Accord_

_The Eleventh Blight (19:32-19:35 Golden) coincided with an arms race ostensibly between Orlais and Tevinter, however the true tension lay between the two factions of the Chantry. Nevarra, with its own interpretation of Andraste’s teachings, but still followers of the White Divine, was caught in the middle. The smaller nation, just coming into cohesion following the fall of the emperor and series of brutal wars lasting nigh an age, had adopted a harder approach to their identity following the war. Disquiet citizenry did not want their way of life lost, nor did they wish for their country to again become a battleground between the Black and White Divines. This sentiment was echoed by Nevarran leadership, offering Nevarra City’s perceived neutrality as a place for negotiations in 19:30 Dragon._

_The talks continued with infrequent regularity for the following two years, during which time the new Orlesian President was elected in a second round election which threatened the fragile peace in Orlais following the fall of the emperor in 18:87 Nations. Nevarra became the site of a series of skirmishes between Tevinter and Orlais, resulting in the breakdown of talks in 19:31 Golden._

_In early 19:32 Golden the situation grew even more dire: with the assassination of prominent Magister and Senate member Teo Ranildi traced back to an Antivian Crow_ garra _named Juan di Availia, the Northern Chantry – and with it Tevinter as a whole – left the Nevarran conference entirely. The White Divine, Beatrix VII, lamented the situation, as the historical ties between the Southern Chantry and the Crows no longer existed. The Chantry, as a whole, condemned violence, she argued, and it was unfitting that these vital talks should dissolve over a magister’s dispute with an Antivan money lender._

_The situation was diffused somewhat, when the world’s attention turned toward rumors of an archdemon being sighted over the Frostback Mountains. On 13 Guardian, the 11 th Blight was declared when combined Chantry forces stationed at Cumberland received intelligence and irrefutable evidence captured in still photographs of an archdemon over the destroyed village of Cayrol. Brigadier General S. Marcus Pentaghast, the leader of the Southern Chantry forces in Nevarra, spoke that evening by radio address Southern Thedas, “For the eleventh time, we must stand and be the vanguard. An archdemon appeared near Jader, and with it have come reports of darkspawn. Our world is once again plunged into darkness, but we are the lights in the shadows. For nineteen ages now, Thedas has endured, and Thedas will not fall.”_

_On 28 Guardian, emissaries of both the Black and White Divine, returned to the conference in Nevarra City and hastily formed a League of Nations. It had been two and a half ages since the Tenth Blight (see Chapter 3) and the memory of the ruinous Silent Age still stood a scar, particularly in the Free Marches. An agreement was struck, and signed in Cumberland as troops prepared to cross the Waking Sea to Jader, burned by the horde not one month before. Those who stood inside the rooms for those negotiations between the two factions of the Chantry later wrote of the desperation in the moment. The Grey Wardens were a thing of the past now, their tainted lives withdrawn to pages of history -- with no old gods to corrupt, their role slipped to history so old it was starting to be forgotten as time accelerated along with technology, far outpacing the need to rely on stories to survive the Blight cycles._

_The archdemon - or whatever it was that archdemons were with the old gods long since corrupted and killed - fell over Ferelden in 19:35 Golden, a great battle on the rolling hills of the Bannon. The allied forces emerged victorious over the creature, driving the horde back underground. It is one of a handful of instances since the Ancient Age when the whole of Southern Thedas stood aligned under the dual banners of the Black and White Divine. The 4 th Nevarran Accord marks the final instance of cooperation between Orlais and Tevinter this Age. The subsequent war and division of Val Royeaux into zones of influence are discussed in the following chapter. _

̶  From: _Southern Thedas Geopolitics since 19:0 Golden_

* * *

 

_Wintersend, 19:89 Golden, Val Royeaux, Orlais_

She stands in the corner of her own party, watching those who come to revel at the Antivian expense flit birdlike between clusters of conversation. She’s waiting for a particular moment to reinsert herself into the room, but for now it is a wine just uncorked – it must breathe before it is poured into the glass of the evening’s dance. She hadn’t expected the party, her perfect, culminating, beautiful Wintersend fete which was sure to be the talk of Val Royeaux on both sides of the wall for years to come, the party she’d spent every spare minute planning for the better part of the past month, to be so utterly dull. _Maker_ , it’d taken two months before she’d started planning in earnest to obtain the necessary diplomatic passes for her guest from the walled, Tevinter, North of the city to pass under the ugly slash across this once great city and into the free, Orlesian, South.

“Ambassador, it’s a surprise to see you so removed from the festivities.” Her aide is at her shoulder, his lips pressed into a thin line. He’s Fereldan,  loyal as any of the dogs in their ancient heraldry. Josephine keeps him around because he’s far too much of a chantry boy to be corruptible, and, at any rate, his _abuela_ is Antivan and a close friend of Josephine’s uncle.

(Their affair is legendary and hardly a secret, but appearances, especially in Orlais, must be maintained at all cost.)

“The room needs time, Charles.”

“If you say so.” He looks around. “There are some notable absences among the senators we invited.”

As if this event was for _senators_.

“The hour is early yet. It is Wintersend, after all.”

She presses two fingers to her chin, arm wrapped around herself as she stares at the sea of tuxedos, gala dresses, and the occasional hint of mage robes and masks for those who still adhere to the old traditions on this, the breaking of the darkness of winter and the steady progression toward the equinox. Fetes like this in Val Royeaux were the talk of the town on both sides of the wall for days, if not weeks after the fact. Josephine wanted this affair to be more understated than the parties sure to be thrown closer to the university. Anything west or south of the river, honestly, was sure to be full of dance, drugs, and sin. Just the sort of thing individuals such as her self - or Charles’ missing senators - could scarce afford to be seen near.

Josephine hums quietly. Tonight is the night. The pieces are already in place – and the ever-present march toward revolution continued on in a land to the north of here. She is ready for this dance, the next round in the game she’s known was coming for quite some time.

“They’ll be along, if they’d like to be seen.”

“You have set this party up as the place to be in Val Royeaux, they’d better be.” Charles’ eyes dance with a promise not yet spoken into words. “Well, here or the Summit across the Wall, though Chantry parties are dreadfully dull affairs and the Black and White Divine will spend the entire night in Concalve.”

Josephine is not one for idle threats or insult, and does not suffer them easily. The steeliness in her voice is easy for Charles to understand. He should know better. He’s been with her in this role long enough. “Quite,” she says, brooking no further conversation. Her eyes scan the partygoers, taking in the traditional masks and belted waistlines which were so fashionable of late. They suited Josephine’s taste, certainly, even if they did leave something to be desired on those in attendance who lacked the height to offset a cinched torso with longer legs.

The Summit would be on everyone’s mind tonight, the first of its kind and monumental in that it was happening at all. The pressure placed on Tevinter and the Black Divine to keep hold of a the hornet’s nest of rebellion which was Nevarra these days was one under which the White Divine and her support of the Silks – the revolutionary forces which had survived the first round of purges years ago now – _thrived._ Josephine’s heart sung with it – the potential for peace and a Free Nevarra. If Nevarra fell out of Tevinter’s hands, if Nevarra, the veritable jewel in the crown of this third rendition of Tevinter at its most imperial, could rule themselves, maybe Orlais could finally push back and be _one_ once more.

By rights, Josephine should have been there, brokering the deal herself, but the Chantry had shut Antiva, and their spycraft, from the negotiations. No, this was for Conclave, and would be negotiated by the rival divines alone.

The insult to Antiva, and to herself, was something Josephine could not _abide_ , and she’d say as much to Charles if the slight would not go right over the boy’s head. He had no mind for the art of diplomatic subtlety or the game itself. That was what he was here to learn, to go and do what Josephine did in Fereldan, where the stakes were not nearly as high and where there wouldn’t be _war_ if he went and said the wrong thing.

Her eyes move slowly across the room and she’s walking forward even before she catches herself, realizes what she’s doing. There, at the entrance to Josephine’s ballroom, shrugging off a long tan overcoat and purple scarf, is the guest of honour.

“The Chantry are sending their spies in the open now?” The scowl and distaste is present in Charles’s voice even if Josephine cannot drag her eyes away from the woman at the doorway. Josephine has met her a handful of times, twice really, and each time has left an indelible mark on Josephine. Charles’s lip curls even more tightly. “How… brazen.”

“Don’t be that way Charles,” Josephine turns her head to him, glittering gold hoop in her ear catching on her shoulder. She reaches up to set it straight and smiles sweetly at him. It’s easy then, to take his arm, to put him the role of easy going gentleman. When he’s off balance, his hand touching her shoulder and then the small of her back in what is the day’s etiquette for a male escort at such an affair, Josephine continues, “I invited her.”

He stops. Looks at her aghast. “I heard she’s only recently been called back into service.”

Josephine clicks her tongue. She has no _time_ for such antics or rudimentary understanding of the game. Her expression sours from the party-going smile to that of his employer in a heartbeat. She fixes him with a steady glare. “She’s a master of her craft, Charles. Now, please, escort me over.”

This reunion was too long in the making.

* * *

The Chantry Spy - the Nightingale - _Leliana_ \- had crossed paths with Josephine twice before. Their first meeting was in 75 Golden, quite by chance at a cafe just outside the university where Josephine was working toward an advanced degree in international diplomacy.  She was with a diplomat’s son, seated at small table with a cigarette at her lips, her head a little too close to the boy’s, as they read over a leaflet he’d prepared. There was a gathering planned for the evening, and Jean-Claude, son Southern Orlais’ Foreign Secretary, was planning on giving a speech to correspond with the text.

A young woman - a handful of years older than Josephine, had sat in the corner of the cafe, plucking out a tune on a guitar and quietly singing to herself. She was talented, far more so than Josephine would have expected for someone performing at a student cafe. She caught Josephine’s eye and smiled.

“You should talk to her.” Jean-Claude nudged Josephine.

“But the speech—”

“The speech is fine, that girl can’t take her eyes off of you, Josie.” He grinned, picking up his coffee and sipping it with a primness that spoke to a privileged upbringing. “You should say hello.”

So Josephine screwed up her courage and walked up to speak to the pretty redhead.

It was the eve of one of the great student protests to which Josephine had tried to cut her teeth on being a revolutionary before she’d found the life and its violence not to her taste - change is a slow march. A protest is a single _event_ , one which oftentimes lacks the power to create the revolution she so longed for at twenty-one. Josephine learned that lesson as they’d piled crates and tipped over cars and blocked the Boulevards, shouting and singing - comrades in arms and belief and _joy_ \- about an end to the post-war and blight austerity and pushing for global peace.

That night, Josephine had run through the streets following the girl from the cafe. Jean-Claude stayed with the protests, waving her off to go have fun. So Josephine allowed herself to be a little daring, and a little foolish. She took the redhead’s hand, helped her with her cans of spray paint, and followed her all over South Val Royeaux. They left marks on doors and buildings, all over the city - seemingly at random. It was easy then, when the girl smiled down at her to allow herself to sit on the bank of the river and be kissed in the moonlight. It was only later, far later, when Josephine woke alone and found the newspaper and a cup of steaming espresso waiting for her that she realized what they’d done.

The paper, one of the more conservative and Chantry favouring, proclaimed arrests had been made of Tevinter spies in the South of the city. A network of information peddlers exposed, and their connections, the paper speculated, were as damned as the Tevinter of Old, when Andraste lead the first Exhausted March north to reclaim the world. It was, Josephine would later lament to a classmate over her third coffee of the day, just a touch dramatic in its religiosity and its language. Nothing would happen to these men. They’d be sent to the other side of the wall, not burned as Andraste.

This was a point she’d made with a flourish, brandishing the newspaper at the half-elven girl who was her best friend at university at the grand enchantress’s salon later that day. “And as an Antivan, I’m allowed to say this, _non_? No one is executed in this country these days.”

Except she was wrong.

Jean-Claude was arrested for what he’d written in his leaflet. And for the information he’d stolen from his diplomat father to give to the revolutionaries on the other side of the wall. He was one of five men publicly executed for espionage later that week. Their deaths a public spectacle and the bloody blade falling as was barbaric tradition following the bloody revolutions to and the Orlesian impetus to divest themselves from the Chantry and the Nobility in the late Second Dragon Age and early Nations Age. It had been the first time elves and humans had risen together toward a common cause, and cries for equality between all races in the segregated cities filled the streets. Mages, too, threw off their relegation to academic circles to rally in the streets, then. Josephine was a lover of history, but there were some events – actions – terrible deeds, she wished would fall into the realm of memory to eventually be forgotten.

Josephine had gone to protest the barbaric act, she’d used her connections to the Antivan crown, slim though they were, to try and speak to Jean-Claude, but it was to no avail. He had committed treason. Even his father would not stand by him now.

It was in the streets - later - before the execution of her best friend and the man who’d opened her mind to the prospects of _peace_ as a policy strategy, as opposed to power, when Josephine put the pieces together. There were whispers at the Antivan embassy and on the boulevards, of counter-espionage. Of masterstroke of intelligence gathering which lead the police straight to these men. Marks on their doors, an unmarked brown envelope slid under the door of the Minister of Police’s apartment in town, a name: _Marjolaine_ ; a flock of birds accompanies her, and secrets are her trade. The girl she’d let lead her deeper into the night, the girl she’d committed mischief with, the girl she’d allowed herself – just for a moment – to forget herself with; that girl was Marjolaine’s protégé. Some said she was more than that entirely. Her name was a mystery to most who met her and lived to tell the tale, and she was Marjolaine’s Nightingale.

After that meeting, Josephine tracked her, followed her career – the whispers of her near death at the hands of her mentor – her disappearance from Val Royeaux entirely. Yet despite her best efforts, Josephine did not see the Nightingale again for many years. The second time they met was far more complicated.

* * *

"Ambassador,” the Nightingale murmurs, “charmed.” She dips her head to press her lips to the back of Josephine’s hand – a relic of another time – an old Chantry tradition. Josephine’s family was nobility long ago, despite their fall from grace centuries before. Montiyets persisted as all good Antivans did. Their nation was a resilient bunch. “I did not expect to be invited to such an event so soon after my return.”

In her head, Josephine has started this letter more times than she cares to count: _You are a wound I’ve allowed to fester,_ she’d begin _. You are a crutch I use to keep distance from others._ She’s prepared it perfectly, written it a dozen times, and burned it just as many. She didn’t know where The Nightingale had gone – when she’d disappeared up into the Marches to take care of Chantry business – or when she’d vanished into the mountains between Ferelden and Orlais for much of the past five years. She is the Left Hand of the Divine, and what Josephine has to say to her cannot be put to paper, not if she wishes to keep them both alive.

Instead she demurs, tilting her head. The Nightingale’s lips were warm and soft at the back of her hand. “You are a ranking representative of the Chantry, are you not? I hardly see why you would not merit an invitation. How better than to ensure the good people of our walled city know of your return from the Marches if not to be seen in society?”

They bend closer, to kiss the air at each other’s cheeks in Orleasian fashion. Her voice is not more than a whisper. “Perhaps this is not the society I wish to be seen with, Ambassador.”

“You could have politely declined, Sister. I know there are…more pressing matters for your attention. What with the Silks moving.”

The statement is bait. Josephine schools her face impassive ash she steps back.

The Nightingale’s fingers clasp Josephine’s fingers tightly – too tightly for the briefest of moments. Josephine is used to pain, and keeps her smile bland – a hostess’s smile. The pain is a reminder of who the Nightingale is, of the role she plays in this divided city, the keeper of all its secrets for The Divine. “I would not miss seeing you for the world, Ambassador.” The affection dances at the slight upturn of her lips, stained red this evening against pale, freckled skin. “I had not realized the impression I made.”

* * *

Josephine was appointed attaché for the Antivan embassy following the completion of her advanced schooling in the autumn of 80 Golden, the gruelling task of working within international politics while still at school a burden Josephine carried without complaint. She was set to be the future ambassador. Everyone knew it. She was the favourite of the new queen (they were friends from secondary school) and the Antivan government was trying to re-insert itself into Thedasian politics after years of being mired in the civil war which had consumed much of Josephine’s early years.

She took to the task of diplomacy like few she had ever encountered before. It came naturally to her, unlike some of the more tedious lessons her father had attempted to teach her regarding art as a child. Josephine’s art came in words, not though a paint brush. It was something her father would never understand. He spent money he did not have on tutors for her, hoping to awaken some latent talent at painting flowers, and Josephine painted her protests in world so elegant they formed flowers onto themselves. He’d given up not long after that, and Josephine had politely declined his repeated offers that they try again whenever she could spare a few moments to return home these days.  The flights, or indeed the train, simply took too long. And she could scarce afford to – let alone logistically contemplate what it would take to– leave Val Royeaux these days.

Tensions between Orlais and Tevinter were never more apparent than in Val Royeaux, with the wall standing a great monument to the division of southern Thedas and the ever-present threat of further conflict. The détente between the two countries could only carry on so long as the rest of the world did not interfere. The high commissioners of the north and south were no longer on speaking terms, and Josephine, relegated to hide on Antivan sovereign ground within the embassy, feared what would happen should the Tevinters decide to cut Val Royeaux off from the free south. It had been an ongoing threat for years, ever since the partition of the city and the dawning realization by southern Orlais that Tevinter controlled most of the lands which surrounded their capital. It would be easy, so easy, to use the people still within the city as a bargaining chip for further concessions from Orlais.

And that is what Tevinter did, just as winter fell a blanket of snow and cold across Orlais. Josephine hated the cold, but had grown used to the cold as she entered her tenth winter in the country. There was little coal for heating in the city these days, the trains hauling it across The Dales into the city had been one of the first things Tevinter halted in their attempt to exercise power in the developing international political situation stemming, in part, from Nevarran citizens wanting no more of the occupation of their lands. Months of street protests and skirmishes with occupying forces had led to elections and a change in government, which was taking steps to expel Tevinter. Val Royeaux was a test case, a display of might to show what Tevinter could do to Orlais, a threat as to what could happen to the far smaller and poorer country of Nevarra should they ever try and rise up again like they had before.

Josephine endured, as Montilyets always did.

She wrapped herself each morning in as many sweaters as she could before movement became impractical and gave all the coal and wood her diplomatic connections allowed to her Orlesian bodyguard. “It’s barbaric, what they’re doing,” she confessed to him one evening as he walked her up to her flat. “I – that is, we, in Antiva, cannot stand to see people starve or freeze to death.”

“That is easy,” His name was Michel. He was a former officer in the Orlesian Army, now turned to protection details as there was little use for officers in armies which could not win battles to protect their homeland. “You are afforded privileges we are not. Your food is taken care of as you are a diplomat – your heat as well. You can send mail outside of the city. You can speak freely within the pretty halls of your embassy.”

“We are working to restore the trade routes. People should not be starved out of their own homes.” Josephine clicked her tongue. “Does the north not fare as poorly as the south? Removing heating fuel hurts everyone, and the occupiers, much like my countrymen, do not fare well in the cold.”

“It’s what the Tevinter bastards want. They want us starving, weak and freezing so when they push us into alienages and ghettos we’ll just disappear and with us all of Orlais and what we and the White Divine stand for.” The White Divine, who, since the First Dragon Age, has stood for Andraste’s love of all her people, not just the humans, not just the mages. Those reforms had changed the south, but had in part fuelled the continued tensions between Tevinter and Orlais. For nearly a thousand years the two nations rose and fell only to rise again, like a phoenix from the ashes of what once was. “We cannot allow that.”

“Michel, I assure you, we are working on it.” Josephine’s mind was already racing as she placed a gentle hand on the blonde man’s shoulder. “We’ll fix this. Even if Antiva has to drop supplies from the sky, Val Royeaux will not starve.”

“Those are pretty words, but words are not action.” Michel’s voice was bitter as he spoke. It reminded Josephine of her student days, when she’d wanted and fought for _peace_ , and her friend had been killed. Her words were pretty then too, and they had not saved Jean-Claude. The realities of the situation, the crisis mounting as supplies were blocked and heating fuel stores ran low, was enough to tell Josephine words would not be enough this time. Protest would not be enough.

 _Action, then_.

The next morning Josephine crossed into North Val Royeaux. She had a destination in mind, but her path was meandering, knowing the Tevinter Magisterial Police were following her. They could not touch her, for all of Val Royeaux knew her not to be a spy. They were wrong, but they did not need to know that. Josephine was far, far better at the game than to be caught in the shadows. No, the best spywork was done in the open. Perhaps the Magisterial Police knew that. Perhaps that was why they still followed and regarded Josephine with deep suspicion as she headed down a certain rue which dead-ended in the river, and then, on the far side, the wall which divided the city. She stood at the end of the street, staring at the river, wishing she had not quit smoking. She watched the Magisterial Police as they watched her, her arms folded as the ice-covered river cracked and popped in the unseasonably warm air.

Eventually, after nearly an hour, they left, and Josephine continued on her way, walking up the river rue until she found the alleyway she was looking for. There, at the end of the cobbled street, was a bookseller. The proprietress was an elderly woman named Dorothea, and she sold books on magic. It was a poorly kept secret in Josephine’s circles that Dorothea was the ‘man in the north’ -- a Chantry spy and missionary, smuggling literature into the North and dissidents into the South. Rumours said she had a network of spies to rival that of the Magisterial Police which she’d placed at the Chantry’s disposal.

It was Dorothea’s network Josephine wanted. She was taking a risk, coming to the north, to this front of a bookseller. Tevinter did not take kindly to Antivans in North Val Royeaux, however they could do little to stop her with her passport. Tevinter was, after all, not at war with Antiva. Josephine planned on using that fact to her advantage. She had a plan: but she needed Dorothea’s network -- and the Chantry’s blessing -- in order for it to grow legs.

The shop was musty and smelled slightly of burnt ozone - the smell of magic and lyrium together. Josephine glanced around and took in the cluttered mess of the bookstore. “Madame,” Josephine began upon entering. “There are whispers you can get a message to the Divine.”

“It is foolish to come north of the wall,” the shopkeep answered. Her expression was long-tired, worn as only one who’d played the game far longer than any should could be. “Though you’ve an honest face.”

“I try to be truthful in all endeavours, Revered Mother.”

_A lie._

“I would almost believe that,” came the response, “If you were not so good a politician, Ambassador.” The woman – Dorothea – the woman who looked into the face of Tevinter’s darkness and found salvation for those who could not find it for themselves – rose to her feet. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

When Josephine departed the back room of the bookstore some twenty minutes later, she was in a daze. Dorothea could not help her, not directly. There was a risk, it seemed, of upsetting the balance between Black and White Divine, one which was so hard fought during the Nevarran Accords. Dorothea could not outwardly involve herself, but she could do the next best thing: give Josephine an avenue of inquiry, and see if they could unravel this blockade together.

Standing in the doorway, Dorothea raised a hand in parting. “Walk in the Maker’s light, Lady Montilyet, and perhaps a solution will present itself.” Dorothea’s eyes crinkled, crow’s feet scraping against her cheeks, making her look shrewd. She pressed her palm flat against the door, her expression thoughtful. “Perhaps a light in the shadows, at three bells?”

“I will catch the dawn,” Josephine promised. In the past she’d burned midnight oil in vigil, inside the Grand Cathedral walls, praying for the safe return of her lover gone off into Tevinter territory to fight for Orlesian freedom only to come back haunted and shrouded in darkness. A memory – then – a ghost haunting her; a woman with red hair disappeared into Ferelden to fight the darkspawn. The Maker hadn’t spoken to Josephine, who scarcely believed in such opiates as religion in this day and age of modern technology and scientific revelation, but sitting in the Grand Cathedral had brought solace from the ghosts of lovers found gone and vanished in the space of a single evening.

Not long after, one early morning morning, just as winter broke into a muddy thaw, Josephine spoke with the ambassador at length in the embassy bathroom with all of taps running. The room was bugged, Tevinter and Chantry listening devices, however there was no easy way to remove such devices without drawing attention to the conversations Josephine and the ambassador were having. So the taps were run and the conversation was whispered between Madame Arduno and Lady Montilyet, kept locked away, never to be spoken of aloud. It was a plan to try and force both sides to the table in what was sure to be an internationally broadcast event. It was a carefully orchestrated charade.

There was an Antivan tanker just outside of Jader weighed heavy with crude oil to be refined near Val Chevin. The blockade would prevent that fuel from reaching Val Royeaux, so it had been stored in part at Jader and in part across the Waking Sea at Cumberland in Nevarra. Nevarra, despite Tevinter’s best efforts, insisted on at least the façade of self-governance and Tevinter could not stop their trade with neighbouring countries – especially when half the country was at the cusp of revolt. They placated Nevarra yet pushed, pushed so hard against Orlais; the old enemy. They’d put down Nevarra’s rebellion already, and the streets had run red with blood.

The ambassador had clasped Josephine’s hand that morning. “You, my dear,” she’d whispered pressing her lips to Josephine’s cheek, “are wasted here. Our intelligence services could use a mind like yours.”

“I could never be a spy,” Josephine answered, thinking of those men she’d condemned to death that night at university playing at spy and anarchist all at once. “I like to be held accountable for my actions.”

_Another lie._

What went unsaid was this was a suicide mission for Josephine’s career if it went pants up. Josephine was a master gambler, she could bluff on a set of twos, or run the river until anyone else would bust. No one played her in Wicked Grace for this reason, not since she made rent one month while still in university while sitting on a stool in the back of a smoke filled club, betting her way to the financial ruin of a series of progressively older and increasingly irritated men The Ambassador’s promise when unspoken, but it was sure as Andraste’s grace itself. Josephine would take the fall if this plan did not work.

It would not go sour. Josephine was sure of it.

This plan was months of freezing cold and hungry winter nights in the making. She, like the people of Val Royeaux, shivered in her bed under all the blankets she owned. She, like the people of Val Royeaux, scraped by on handfuls of Ferelden barley that hadn’t yet gone to seed mixed with watery broth from boiled bones saved in iceboxes for Wintersend celebrations when the fast of winter was broken with the traditional feast. Josephine did not have to live as the people of the city did. Her diplomatic passport and the Antivan embassy afforded her some considerations the common folk of the walled-off city were not afforded. Yet she could not bring herself to stoop to the level of the privileged the continued relations between Tevinter and Antiva allowed her. Not when her neighbour was sent to hospital for pneumonia from the cold, not when she caught sight of how gaunt she looked in the mirror one morning, her eyes bright despite the hunger barely hidden there.

The blockade _must_ end. And Josephine would be the one to end it.

Every morning, Josephine’s alarm clock would ring with the bells of the Grand Cathedral at three o’clock on the dot. She would rise from her bed still clad in two thick wool jumpers to keep warm, and stand by her window, looking out onto the dark street below. Dorothea had promised news at three bells, and Josephine was not about to miss it for want of sleep. Not with the people of Val Royeaux were starving, freezing to death in their beds. The South was harsh, as a whole, but this winter was particularly brutal. She shivered for an hour each morning, and then fell back into another hour or two of fitful sleep before her day would begin in earnest.

And one night in the dead of winter, quite by accident, she slept through her three o’clock alarm only to awaken with a gentle hand on her shoulder. Josephine started, her body aching with the cold, and groggily opened her eyes.

“Mlle. Montilyet?” The voice was female and unmistakably familiar, but the speaker too clad in the darkness of this cut off city for Josephine to make out her face.

“If one must be Orlesian about it,” Josephine sat up slowly and reached for the lamp at her bedside.

A hand, gloved in soft leather caught her own. “No light.” Josephine bristled at the touch, but kept still.

The silence which followed was filled with the expectant pulse, the waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. Josephine excelled at such silences: the demand for more information than she was given occupied her very breath as she indignantly contemplated the weight of the gloved hand on her forearm. It was warm, even though two jumpers. Warm and presumptive, and the room was filled with the faint smell of Ferelden flowers – Andraste’s Grace.

It was said smells were the most evocative of memory of all the senses. Josephine associated the smell of old leather and turpentine with her father, the hint of elfroot smoke and a touch of brandy at the breath with her eldest brother. And this smell, this smell of a perfume she’d only ever smelled once before in such close proximity. On a night she’d rather forget – a night she cannot help but feel burned into her memory.

_Nightingale._

Josephine drew a shaky breath, and then another. “Your touch presumes much.” Her annoyance was hard to keep at bay. Her shoulders twitched and she pulled her shoulder away from the intruder’s hand.

The smile was evident in the woman’s voice as the bed shifted. “You requested assistance, _non_?”

“Not from one of Marjolaine’s flock.” It was a dig, driving home how adept Josephine, too, was at the game. “She has no power in this city anymore.”

“Marjolaine is dead.” The reply was sparse, neutral. A statement of fact with all emotion squashed away. A true Orlesian, this woman was, even shrouded in darkness. “I am here at the behest of another.”

A smile played at Josephine’s lips, for that was an interesting development indeed – perhaps this ill-fated reunion carried a benefit after all. “The Revered Mother has a flock all her own I see.”

“She no longer practices.”

“There are whispers she could be Divine when Beatrix dies.”

“She’d have to come back to this side of the wall for that and she enjoys smuggling Tevinter elves to the free south too much for such a sacrifice.”

Josephine hummed her agreement. “Sounds like a story.”

“It is, truly.” A laugh, full of genuine amusement, filled the room. “I’ll tell you someday. But, first, Mlle. Montilyet, we must away from this charming apartment. As much as I’d love to linger in the relative warmth, we have much to do out in the cold.”

Josephine dressed the dark, hurriedly pulling on faded jeans, nearly white with age. She tugged on thick socks and then her boots and gathered her hair into a messy braid. It was only then, shrugging on her long ramswool overcoat, that she turned and fixed the intruder – the Nightingale – with a hard stare. “I will not kill anyone.”

“No one is asking you to.”

“Before–before you never said what you were doing, and, and Jean-Claude – he died.”

“Perhaps he should not have committed treason, then.” The woman tilted her head. In the semi-darkness, the smile was an ugly slash across her face; cruel and uncaring. “Perhaps you should not have been so naïve to believe your game of anarchy was not without casualties.” Josephine said nothing, her stomach roiling at the truth of the statement. She was naïve, full of youthful belief in the long arm of justice. A fool she was, thinking there was recourse which did not involve bloodshed for the crimes those men committed. “Had you been caught with him, had you been near him during the arrests when things turned violent, I could not be certain of your fate. You would have been arrested, of that we were certain. And being Antivan, and so connected as you were even then, there was talk of you too being a spy. So I stole you away and kept you safe. You had a larger purpose left to serve. Marjolaine was furious when I told her I wouldn’t let you die.”

Josephine stared openly at her. “You could have said something.”

“Would you have believed me?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Well, then perhaps we will never know.”

Josephine was silent. She wound a scarf around her neck and shivered despite its choking warmth. This situation could turn sour at any moment.

“But,” came the continuation after Josephine’s silence stretched on, “If we continue to linger in the past, we will doom this city to starve to death. Now, Josephine, will you come with me?” She held out her hand.

“Only if you tell me your name – your real name.”

“That’s all? You’re far too trusting,” the woman answered. She gave a half bow, all flourish and dramatics. In another life she could have been an actress - an entertainer of some sort at any rate. “I am Leliana.”

“No family name?”

“I have none which I could give.” Leliana looked away, but her hand remained outstretched. “My family died when I was a child, during the aftermath of war. I don’t remember them.”

In that moment, Josephine decided to trust the statement. She could no more press the woman for the truth than she could ask for her own honesty in such a moment. She was of a fallen house, after all, only just barely scraping the surface of respectability because of the friends she’d made in school and because she was so _very_ good at her job. Swallowing hard, Josephine took her hand and let herself be pulled out into the night and toward the salvation which would save the city.

Dawn broke weak and watery the next morning. She stood on the roof of her building, peering out over the horizon toward the harbour. In the distance, a ship loomed a black mark on the horizon flying Antivan colours. Their deception was unfailing in its simplicity: forged Tevinter paperwork to allow the ship entry and passage up the locks to the Southside Docks, where those in free Val Royeaux could receive the aid of food stores and medical supplies tucked away in the ship’s hold unhindered. The paperwork had been planted in the right offices, and half had been in the north. For that, Josephine’s pass – the second one she never mentioned to anyone with her photograph but not her name – was needed to get them over the wall.

They played the game well together, played lovers off to a club, played it up for the guards and once more those hands were on her and Josephine, just this once, could allow herself to be dishonest. Dishonest enough to forget herself and get caught up in the moment when they met Leliana’s friend with the key in the dark heart of a basement punk club, guitars and screaming elves on the barely elevated stage. Their faces were tattooed like those of the distant past, and their lyrics haunting if you could make them out through the din. She let Leliana kiss her in that club, pushed up against a wall covered in graffiti and paint and Maker-only-knew-what.

And then they stole away again, key in hand and simple plot of international embarrassment in hand. It was so simple it was almost painful. The locks fell away at Leliana’s fingers and her tall frame cut an angular shadow as they lay their trap.

All the while, as they moved, Leliana’s lips mouthed the words of the Chant of Light. And Josephine, who had never been religious, could do not more than watch as the divine fury of the Maker and all the Southern Chantry ensured her nation’s ship would be allowed to pass and the food and fuel - so desperately needed - would make it through Tevinter’s blockade.

The morning, after all was said and done, dawned bitterly cold.

“You may be the one honest person in this city,” Leliana commented, sipping at a steaming mug of tea, her fingers curled around the string the worn enamel, an old pottery project of Josephine’s father. Wind whipped around her, blowing her hair into her face. “Yet you lie so convincingly to save these people.”

“Would you not?” Josephine asked, bringing her own mug to her lips. Leliana had brought coffee with her – a gift, she said – from Dorothea. It was a strong Tevinter blend, the kind Josephine adored but politics did not allow her to publicly consume. “To ensure no one else goes hungry seems a lie even the Maker would forgive.”

“It will win you no allies in the north.” Leliana hummed. “Nor within the Chantry. _Those who bear false witness and work to deceive others, know this: there is but one Truth. All things are known to our Maker and He shall judge their lies._ ”

“Pretty words, coming from a spy.” Josephine sipped her tea. “Does the Chant touch on hypocrisy as well?”

“We wear many masks, Mlle. Montilyet, in His name.” Leliana ducked her head, but the colour on her cheeks told Josephine she’d touched a deep nerve. Josephine exhaled, resolved not to mention the Chantry again until their sojourn together was over.  “ _Dead we lie in the memory of you._ ”

“Givanti?” Josephine questioned.

“No, older. An old elven poet said to have loved only women.” Leliana’s lips twitched and she looked out toward the harbour. “How many people must die in the Marker’s name? Millions have already perished, _non?_ Why is it that more, still, must shed blood in the name of what is right and righteous?”

Josephine had no answer for her, she did not have faith in the way Leliana did, and she did not think it was her place to comment on Chantry affairs. The silence between them stretched on, punctuated, soon, by the sounds of approaching sirens. The ship, it seemed, had been allowed through.

“Tevinter will not suffer this humiliation lightly.” Leliana mused.

“It is Antiva who will bear the brunt of it, not Val Royeaux. Not Orlais. We are farther flung, and it would not behove Tevinter to let our allegiance fall over this silly blockade to prove a political point to the Free Marches and Ferelden.”

“And the people of Val Royeaux will not starve this day.”

“No.” Josephine answered honestly. “Today they will live.”

* * *

It is later, when they have circled each other four times and Josephine has caught two Nevarran dignitaries attempting to break into her private offices under the guise of hunting for the toilet that they meet again. This time in a more secluded corner. The Nightingale’s fingernails are painted red to match her lips and she’s lazily leaning against the wall, watching the party, a half finished flute of something fizzy and decidedly alcoholic dangling between her fingertips.

She opens her mouth, but Josephine purses her lips and shakes her head. She reaches into the plant beside the Nightingale and gingerly removes the small listening device planted there. She drops it to the floor and places her foot on it, kicking it backwards so it skids across the floor only to come to rest underneath the catering table.

The room is bugged – Chantry, Tevinter and Orlesian governmental forces have been in in various iterations and poorly mocked up work orders to fiddle with the lyrium and fluorescent lighting inlaid into the walls, to refresh the stand of Antivan plants, or move in the long table from the embassy’s foyer into the ballroom. Normally, such brazen attempts would be an affront to her legitimacy as ambassador, not to mention Antiva’s sovereignty, however Josephine had let it happen. The devices would all be removed before morning, crushed and couriered back to their respective intelligence agencies. The party was a dull, boring affair for a reason. Josephine wanted them to stop being so brazen, and stop flaunting her ability to get in when she so clearly was letting them. She was planning on a brazen move of her own to prove this point and to ensure they’d respect her enough to try in the future.

“Wise move.”

“It was one of yours,” Josephine snips. “Came in yesterday with the vendor.”

“How… unsubtle.” The Nightingale smiles slowly, a little bit more teeth than Josephine was anticipating. “You must accept my apology.”

“Your organization must respect my authority and this embassy is sovereign ground. You are, by rights, in Antiva right now.”

“I could go three blocks and be in Tevinter in this damn city.”

“But you are not in Tevinter,” Josephine presses. Her expression falls, ever so slightly, and she tilts her head to one side knowing her companion will follow her gaze and catch her meaning. They must speak, but it cannot be here. “This is _my_ embassy and I’ll not have the Divine knowing every word I speak to my staff.”

“What of the words you speak to the Knight Commander behind closed doors when all the city lies abed, Ambassador?” Josephine manages to not draw breath too quickly, but it’s a close thing. The Nightingale knows she has scored a point, and has fixed Josephine with a particularly bland expression, despite the triumphant gleam in her eye. It is, Josephine knows, a chance at a parry and riposte.

She smiles sweetly at her companion and says, “I hardly see how taking to my bed is unfamiliar to ranking members of her staff.”

Sleeping with the Knight Commander had not been…strictly business, but the information he confessed in the aftermath of the encounter had been enough to bring several elven dissidents across the wall and into the free southern half of the city under the cover of an academic conference at the University. The Knight Commander had agreed, as a favour, to ‘lose’ them in a crowd of student protestors, allowing them to vanish further south on a train to Velun where they could catch a plane to Antiva and the asylum Josephine had arranged for them in exchange for what they knew of Tevinter’s work developing lyrium weapons.

“Is that what this is about?”

 “Surely the Divine should know if her golden lion is compromised.”

“What do you want, Josephine?” Leliana’s eyes are hard. She’s been gone a long time now and Josephine wants _more_ than the chance encounters of their past now. If they are both to occupy places of relative power within this city, this is a truce which must be worked out.

Josephine angles her head away from the Tevinter minster of commerce who’s watching them intently. Charles has unearthed intelligence suggesting he may be able to read her lips. She exhales, switching to speak in Antivan. “The White Divine is in Conclave. The Silks are moving. Where does this game end?”

“This is information you should not know.” Leliana’s Antivan is accented, as if it is unfamiliar on her tongue.

_Another lie._

Josephine smiles blithely. “You’d be surprised, what I do and do not know.”

 Their conversation is interrupted before their game can continue further. It is, in some ways, for the best, Josephine thinks. They cannot speak in this place where the walls have ears and there is much she wishes to say to Leliana. The memories of their past meetings, chance encounters between two ships at sea in this masked city they both call home, rush back to her. They fill Josephine with the girlish giddiness she felt at twenty, racing through the boulevards with her radical friends and trying to play nation builders. The naiveté of youth is long gone now, but the girl in Josephine remains in stolen moments where the idealist within her is allowed to breathe beneath the oppressive weight of the realpolitik Val Royeaux demands. There is no space for her high-minded beliefs in this city.

Not when people could die at any moment and war between Tevinter and Orlais is just a misstep away.

“A word, Sister?”

The man hovering at the edge of their conversation clasps his hands behind his back and looks down his nose at Leliana. He is of the Chantry, one of the Chancellors left over from before the previous Divine, and his politics stand antithetical to anything Josephine would ever put to policy. He hadn’t been invited, Josephine couldn’t abide the faction he represented within the Chantry, which means he is here specifically to speak to Leliana. It is as she’d feared then, and events are set into motion.

“Chancellor,” Leliana answers in Orlesian, dipping her head. Her expression goes politely neutral, but Josephine sees the tension in her neck. She does not like this man. “I wasn’t aware you were in attendance, surely the Divine has better use for you than attending the endless monotony of embassy balls.”

Josephine tuts quietly. The barb is a gentle one, playfully spoken with polite smile and cold eyes. It is meant to put distance between herself and Josephine. And Josephine is meant to react according.

“Now, now,” she admonishes. “A little relaxation and brandy in the company of friends never hurt anyone.”

Leliana inclines her head to Josephine. “True. And I do enjoy your company, Ambassador. By your leave?”

“Of course, Sister. I could not keep you from Chantry business. Would you like to use my office?”

A genuine smile flits across Leliana’s face then. “I believe you’ve divested this corner of intrusive ears sufficiently, Ambassador. Roderick and I can speak here.”

He coughs and Josephine forces herself to smile at him. He needs a shave; his Chantry collar is tickled with the graying hairs of his beard. It is the unkempt sort of look Josephine despises in a professional setting, but one which Orlesian men of a certain age believe makes them look attractive. Men of Antiva either have facial or do not, there is none of this in-between business. “Of course. Sister, Chancellor.”

Josephine leaves them and makes her way toward Charles, who is standing by the door which leads back to her private offices, a drawn and worried look on his face. She needs to tell Charles he cannot look like that in public if he has any hope of becoming a successful diplomat. He pulls her into the back rooms and through to the women’s toilets and turns the water on before he speaks, his hands moving franticly as he talks. There is much Antivan blood in him, after all, despite his Ferelden upbringing.  
  
“Something is happening with the Seekers,” Charles explains. His voice is low and tinged with an urgency borne out of this plot blossoming for months now. “We knew about the Silks, but this is new. They’re gathering soldiers and moving them into place.”

“To what end?”

“A threat to the Conclave, I would imagine.”  
  
_Tonight it is then,_ Josephine thinks darkly, _when our dance turns deadly once more._  
  
He passes her a coded message, the Chantry cipher broken by the codebreakers in the basement and the ever-humming click of the lyrium-infused enigma machine. It had taken years to crack during the war, and even more years for those with knowledge to admit they’d sat upon the knowledge and done nothing to save countless scores of lives in favor of the intelligence knowing the codes granted them. Antiva was a small country, a country reliant on trade with larger nations to sustain itself. Their spheres of influence were in shipping and in tourism. They had no real power. This code, and the knowledge of it, gave them power. It was a reminder they were still the nation of the Crows.  
  
“This isn’t from the normal channel.”  
  
Charles shakes his head. “No. It comes from… an outside source.” He exhales, and shifts his weight from foot to foot. He’s nervous – a chance he’s taking then. “You remember that journalist from a few months back – the dwarven Free Marcher?”  
  
Josephine nods He was a clever man who worked with an organization of international journalists who covered wars and humanitarian issues and was considered by many to be one of their best. His work had been published in all the leading publications, oftentimes with the splash of the front-page. True, some knew him for his more sensationalized adventures into tabloid reporting, but Josephine knew a talented man with a nose for a story when she met one. “From the lyrium embargo?”  
  
“Mn. He got in touch. Someone’s been talking to him apparently.”  
  
_Interesting…_  
  
The Seekers of Truth took their name from ancient history, but did not function as a check on Chantry power as they had once. :Now they were a peace keeping force. Josephine had been aware for some time that there were moments where their actions were shrouded in secret, when their purpose seemed to be more of a tool for Tevinter in the South. They'd quash rebellion, put down border skirmishes, and ensure that the division between North and South was maintained. There was something more, though, and Josephine had been waiting for them to take the next step. It was only a matter of time, and it appeared that Conclave would force them out into the light from the shadow where their purpose had been shrouded in mystery for so long.   
  
“Do we know who this someone is?”  
  
“Someone well-connected within the Chantry hierarchy. Tethras wouldn’t specify.” Charles bites at his lip. A blossom of blood wells from where he’s peeled the skin away. “I can have our people go, we know where he’s staying.”  
  
“Give me your lighter.” Charles passes it over wordlessly and Josephine flicks it open. She quit smoking years ago, after university it hadn’t had as much of an allure, but having a lighter on her person is always useful and she’s no mage. Too many things cross her desk every day to not protect herself from the possibilities of a paper trail. Antiva cannot be connected to this intervention. She holds the memo to the flame and dumps it into a free sink, watching until it was nothing but ash. When it’s well and burnt, she turns on the tap and washes the remnants of the communication down the drain. “Our people will not go. I will.”  
  
“Ambassador. You can’t.”  
  
Josephine fixes him with a hard stare, but does not respond. Sometimes the most complete response is no response at all, and Josephine knows Charles will only argue with her. She cannot have dissent among her ranks. She brushes past her assistant and through the corridors back to the bright lights and quiet conversation of her party.  It is fully ensconced now, people filling the space and a few dancing by the band. This is a Wintersend party, though it still feels frightfully dull.  
  
A hand takes her own, drawing her toward the dancefloor. Leliana is grinning at her, a little taller in heels. Her face is alight with a laugh and the spin to go along with the music. “Ambassador,” she says. “You were gone quite a while.” She grins at Josephine as her hands settles on Josephine’s waist in the next step of their dance – far too familiar for the setting. “One might think you’d found a better party.”  
  
It is easy then, to search the crowd over Leliana’s shoulder and see the sour-faced Chancellor still standing in the corner where Josephine left him and Leliana not ten minutes before. He’s speaking to Quanari minister in town to observe the festivities, his expression drawn and concerned. “I could be… persuaded to leave for a better party.”  
  
“Oh?” Leliana’s grin is genuine now. She leans forward and whispers conspiratorially in Josephine’s ear. “I know just the place.”


	2. Some of Them Want to Use You / Some of Them Want to be Used By You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After departing Josephine's Wintersend party, Leliana and Josephine find themselves at an old haunt, with an old friend - before traversing across Val Royeaux to speak to the informant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made some minor edits to Chapter 1 to make the plot more coherent. Would recommend a re-read.

It is easier than Josephine expects to slip away. She merely has to make her excuses to a few dignitaries and disappear though a back door to find Leliana waiting for her outside, wrapped in a long trench in warm khaki, and smoking with the carefully curated nonchalance all Orlesians master while they’re very clearly loitering and observing the streets.  It is a self-preservation method for many in this divided city, to avoid the attention of the occupying Tevinter forces, as well to know when the attention of said forces has been attracted. For those in Leliana’s line of work, those who play the game as though born into it, it is a tool of the trade. Josephine has perfected her own version of this same skill, doing it from within a crowded room rather than as a solitary figure on a street at night. Josephine isn’t sure which is harder, as both have such clear and present danger inherent to them.

Leliana is watching the main embassy gate, smoke curling at her lips in the evening air. Josephine didn’t come out that way for a reason. Too obvious, too noticeable.

She offers the cigarette carton to Josephine without a word and Josephine shakes her head. Leliana shrugs and tucks the carton away into her pocket. It doesn’t take much more than the act of her pocketing the carton for Josephine to notice that Leliana’s completely changed her clothes from what she was wearing to the party earlier. Josephine wishes she’d thought to do the same. She has no idea where this night will lead and she’s in stilettos. _Foolish._

“Do you often come to parties intending to wear multiple outfits?” Josephine asks. She steps forward into Leliana’s personal space and pushes the trench aside to reveal a crisp white shirt and well cut blazer, double breasted and affixed with a black silk pocket square to match the necktie tied loosely around Leliana’s neck. She got dressed in a hurry then. Pulling a face, Josephine straightens the tie, cinching it up Leliana’s neck until her hand is pressed right to the dip in her throat. She holds her hand there, feeling Leliana draw breath shallowly beneath her hand, waiting for the next play in their game.

When Leliana stays still, her hands out to either side, cigarette still held neatly between two fingers, Josephine wonders if she’s not read the situation correctly. Leliana was always open to a play for power, a question with a knife to her throat. Josephine doubts she could ever kill with just her hands – words perhaps, she whispers damnation like the best of them – but never her hands. She smooths the tie, setting it straight, wishing to retie it but the impropriety such a request is too much.

“Is that how you wish for this evening to go?” Leliana asks mildly. She takes a drag from her cigarette. “Because while I am willing to accommodate, we are short on time and have a great ways still to go, Josephine.”

“ _Please_.” Josephine fiddles with the tie once more, setting it _just_ so before tucking her fingers under Leliana’s collar to ensure it is correctly aligned. She hasn’t had anyone to do this for other than Charles in some time – the knight commander’s uniform did not require a tie. She misses this – the fussing – the touch – the instinct to play for power. “I’d hate to think you’d changed on my account. That dress was rather lovely.”

“Part of the trade, to be prepared,” Leliana shrugs before raising her hand and hailing a cab. “It is more practical where we’re going to not be in evening wear.”   
  
“And where are we going?”  
  
Leliana holds the door open for Josephine. “You’ll see – I assure you it’s a better party.”  
  
The address Leliana gives the driver is close to the College of Magi, far from the looming structure of the Grand Cathedral and the prying eyes of those within the church still sceptical of magic despite nearly one thousand years of integration between the magical and non-magical within the eyes of the church. This area is the seat of the Southern School of Magic, oftentimes directly in conflict with the mandates of the occupied northern half of the city and Tevinter proper. Here the streets glowed with controlled lyrium, and the air hung heavy with the fade. Even those without magic felt it here, the veil was threadbare with centuries of practitioners honing their craft.

Josephine did not often come to this part of the city, though her invitations to appear as Antiva’s representative at the College were frequent. This place held bad memories, and with the veil so thin they crept into her dreams and waking moments. She still saw Jean-Claude crumple, lifeless, to the ground of the square, dreams of a better life dying with him. The lyrium in the air was stronger here, it evoked memories of that day far, far stronger than

The cabbie grunts at them in Qunlat as the car rolls to a stop. Leliana pays him with a smile and they talk for a few minutes in his tongue before he drives off. They’re at a corner not far from where Charles’s contact suggested they meet. Josephine stares off in the direction of the meeting place and wraps her arms around herself, not looking at Leliana. She isn’t sure they’re alone on this seemingly abandoned street. She speaks, her lips as still as possible, her voice a breath on the evening air. “The Silks are moving, possibly on Concalve, tonight. The Seekers are mobilizing a response, but my source…implied that perhaps we should not trust their actions.”

When Leliana is silent, Josephine turns. Her companion’s face is a mask of perfect politeness, but the way she shifts her weight to move closer to Josephine without actually moving her feet suggests protectiveness, or perhaps concern. It is an unfamiliar gesture; it has bene years since they’ve been so close to each other while comparatively alone. Leliana’s hand brushes against Josephine’s upper arm before she lets it rest, gentle and soft, on Josephine’s shoulder. “You are not a spy, Ambassador. You should leave the skulking about in the shadows to the professionals.”

“And you’re that?” Josephine’s annoyance is a low burn in her belly. Her nostrils flare. She wants to say more. Wants to tell Leliana how they cannot keep using each other for their own ends. How much she still smarts from when they first met – how taking full advantage of Leliana to break the blockade nearly five years later was not nearly enough payment for Jean-Claude’s life.

“Naturally,” Leliana acquiesces with a tilt of her head. “Why else do you think I knew to bring you here of all places?”

“You knew?”

“Josie, there is very little I do not know. We believe there is a rogue actor within the Seeker order, and believe one of theirs is currently waiting in your safehouse to defect. It is my hope…that you would allow me to join you in speaking to this Seeker.” Leliana’s hand is fire, burning at Josephine’s shoulder. She nudges the hand off her skin without a word. Leliana’s expression darkens then, the message clear: they are not to touch when there are not people to see. “Forgive me, Madam Ambassador. I had meant to convey my knowledge sooner, Roderick’s appearance at your party was…unexpected.”

“I had wondered. I did not invite him.”

“You have far better taste than that, yes.” Leliana doesn’t step away from Josephine, the heady smell of Andreste’s Grace lingers in the air, mingling with the metallic smell of lyrium. “What happens next is anyone’s guess. It is my business to know things, and to protect the Divine’s secrets. If the Seekers are to act against Conclave, which was all but confirmed by the unfortunate appearance of the Chancellor at you party, then we mustn’t waste time. Your contact will have vital information we must get to Divine Justinia before the morrow and the breaking of the Conclave. We must know what they plan, and soon.”

“You wish to meet my contact?” Josephine frowns. Leliana’s reputation, while mere whispers, is a dark one these days. Josephine has known her long enough to dismiss most of them, but she knows Leliana has spent a great deal of time in Ferelden, and after that has been ghosting in and out of both sides of the city, bardic work following in her wake. Now she is a spider, sitting atop a web of the Divine’s best people, tracking the movements of this occupied city and its messy political game. But she is not infallible – she still only carries an Orlesian passport and Chantry paperwork as a lay sister. “You know I can’t protect you if we are caught—”

Josephine’s diplomatic passport will not protect them if they are stopped. And the safe house is painfully – though by design – near to the Tevinter embassy and the convolute.

“We are going to see Madam de Fer, who will provide us with the means to communicate with your contact and direct them to a place where we may meet unhindered.”

“What makes you think Vivienne de Fer is willing to assist the Chantry – or Antiva for that matter? We both know her politics are more focused on other … areas.” Specifically, in power. Vivienne was a sometimes acquaintance in Josephine’s social circles, and a member of the Orlesian President’s government. She’d appear on the arm of one politician or diplomat, discussing the rights of mages to practice however they wanted and the problems of the Tevinter occupied northern half of Val Royeaux at parties from time to time. She was a unionist – she wanted the city united under one banner – an Orlesian one. She was of the Southern School of Magi, rather than the Tevinter North – she wanted the power of mages concentrated behind southern school and away from the Chantry despite her deep faith. She made plain her views of the Tevinter’s school of magic to whomever would listen, it had earned her far more enemies than friends. “Aiding the Divine is hardly her idea of good politics and I have no idea how she feels about Nevarra.”

Leliana lights another cigarette and takes a long drag before offering Josephine her arm. When Josephine hesitates, her mind casting about for a way to refuse politely, Leliana flicks ash away and raises an eyebrow. “We are anonymous here, Josephine, no one knows us save Andraste and the Maker. Won’t you dance with me where no one can see?”

Rolling her eyes, Josephine takes Leliana’s arm, leans against the scratchy fabric of her wool trench, and lets Leliana lead her down the avenue. They walk for two blocks in silence before Leliana pulls them down a side street and then into an alley between two of the mid-Nations Age buildings. A door stands non-descript at the end, a man perched on a stool outside of it sucking down cigarettes and watching them approach. Josephine knows the place, a _salon_ for mages, frequented by the academics and revolutionaries within those circles. She’s only ever been here once, when she was far younger and more inclined to such direct action. Now she knows better – knows how to create peace with words instead of protests.

“Nightingale,” the doorman grunts. “She’s expecting you.” His Orlesian is thickly accented. He gets to his feet and flicks away his cigarette, gesturing for Leliana to raise her arms.

“Word travels fast,” Leliana answers, her voice flinty. From inside her blazer, Leliana produces a gun and hands it to him with a raised eyebrow. “I’ll want that back.”

There is more happening here than Josephine knows, but she did not expect Leliana to come armed to her party – or to come fully prepared to _work_ this evening. It is almost as though it was anticipated that Josephine would act, would reach out and contact her. Josephine watches as the man rummages in his pockets for a moment before producing a coat check ticket and handing it to Leliana. Josephine forces herself to relax her hands, clenched though they are in her pockets. She is out of place down this dingy _ruelle_ in evening wear. It smells like piss and sick and stale beer, setting Josephine’s stomach churning as the doorman moves to stand in front of her. “Arms up, lass.” He’s taller than her by a good head, with big hands which are firm and unflinching as he checks Josephine for the weapons she doesn’t carry. Leliana pulls her inside when he’s satisfied, scowling all the way up the stairs and into the _salon_ proper.

Bookshelves line the walls, the same as they had in Josephine’s one previous trip inside, along with low chaises and overstuffed sofas. While the establishment was far from the nightclub below, with the pounding bass of the dance music barely covered up by the subpar soundproofing of an older building, the atmosphere is far more of Josephine’s residence on a quiet evening when she has to entertain. The room is largely packed with people. A barman stands behind a mirrored bar, speaking to a gaggle of young mages at the bar, clearly still university students. His shirtsleeves are rolled up and he’s gesturing to various bottles behind him, flipping a mixing cup in the air before setting to work making their drinks. It is Wintersend, after all, an occasion for drinking, even if most were downstairs with the louder music.  

Vivienne de Fer sits in the far side of the room, before a wide hearth which recalls earlier days, as glass of wine in her hand holding court over a gaggle of admirers. Josephine would have thought she’d be at a party – at her party perhaps – but the night is yet young. This may be the first stop of an evening, or perhaps, Madam de Fer, like Josephine herself, is getting too old for parties. She looks and her eyes meet Josephine’s evenly, the gaggle of admirers around her disburses with a small nod. The gaggle of young mages at the bar notice this. They collect their drinks quickly before disappearing toward the stairs and the nightclub below.

“Of all people to darken my doorway this night, I had not expected the Antivan Ambassador.” She extends a hand, bedecked with large rings and a single square bracelet which sits a stark white against her dark skin.

The Game takes over then, more habit than impulse. Josephine moves forward to take it as gracefully as she had during the party back at the embassy. They stand close enough to be heard over the music, and Josephine steels herself for the duel. “Madam de Fer, it is lovely to see you again.” Josephine’s smile is small, private, and ever so polite.

“I heard about your Wintersend Soirée, pity my invitation got lost in the post.” Vivienne’s expression is stoic, but there’s a hard edge to her voice which implies Josephine has chosen poorly in declining to invite Vivienne directly to the party. The invitation had gone to her lover, Bastien de Ghislain, as his name was more well-known and accepted in diplomatic circles as a member of one of Orlais’ oldest families and one of the few remaining after the purges of the aristocracy two ages ago. The barb is meant to pick at Josephine’s fear of losing social standing, but it’s a poor attempt at it. The Game is played in this way when stakes are low.   

“Yes,” Josephine answers, “such a pity Bastien had an engagement elsewhere tonight.”

Vivienne’s eyes narrow, and she turns her head to nod at Leliana. “Nightingale.”

“Vivienne.” Leliana returns. Josephine tilts her head, watching Vivienne watch Leliana and wondering how they know each other. “I had hoped we would see each other again before matters of state and Chantry alike drew us together once more.”

This earns a laugh, and the tension lessens in the room significantly. Vivienne sweeps across the room to the bar, selecting a bottle and three glasses before returning. “Someone is threatening the Divine then, you wouldn’t be here otherwise.” She pours and Josephine catches sight of the bottle. It’s a fine whisky from the south of Ferelden. Not exactly to Josephine’s taste, but she knew it would be rude to refuse.

“Perhaps I merely wished to visit,” Leliana answers, tilting the glass back. “Perhaps it is Winterend and I’m feeling like celebrating. Perhaps things are happening which must not be allowed to happen.”

A laugh escapes her, and Vivienne and Leliana’s eyes slide to Josephine. “Perhaps I asked her to take me here,” Josephine raises an eyebrow. “Maker knows a party is only as good as its uninvited guests.”

“Roderick then,” Vivienne isn’t really asking a question. Josephine nods and takes a sip of the whisky. It’s far better than she’s expecting. Vivienne sighs. “He always did have a knack for appearing when he was not wanted.”

“Truly.” Leliana moves forward, her voice drops low. “Is this room clean?”

Looking truly affronted, Vivienne sets down her drink. She steps closer to Leliana and Josephine, opening her palm. Pale blue runes in the colour of the lyrium streetlights outside appear in the air above her outstretched hand, circling slowly. Josephine does not recognize the spell, but it appears Leliana does, as she arches an eyebrow and folds her arms across her chest, waiting as Vivienne completes the spell. The room is caught then, in the cool glow of the spell’s light. Josephine looks from the ghostly pallor that has taken Leliana in this lighting to the way Vivienne now appears a deep blue, and waits for the spell to settle. The people around them seem to freeze, locked in place and silence. “No one can hear us, my dear. The spell will see to it.”

Leliana swirls the whisky in her glass. “Do you recall that nasty business in Celene before you were named Grand Enchanter?”

Vivienne’s face becomes a mask of false politeness. “Do you mean when the Chancellery accused me of attempting to exercise influence above my station or when Celene had them all sacked on my behalf?” She leans forward, her eyes flashing dangerously in the spell’s light. “You’ll do well to remember, Nightingale, that I have friends in high places as well.”

“I had meant the…unfortunate death of the previous Grand Enchanter. You’ll recall how politically advantageous it was for you when it was discovered to be a plot by Tevinter to install one the Northern School and a loyalist to the President’s cabinet.” Leliana looks down at her fingernails. “We are willing to look past a great many things, Madam, so long as we have assurances of silence.”

Josephine exhales slowly. She knew, of course she knew, of Leliana’s methods. Her reputation while working for the Divine is something whispered about in intelligence circles – she sits queen atop of network of spies and knows far too many secrets. The Antivan intelligence community knew nothing of this potential act of treason committed by Vivienne de Fer. Josephine doubts she would have been encouraged to entertain the woman and her lover had it been known within those circles. If de Fer is a snake in the grass, none of Antiva’s secrets are safe, she’s spent enough time at the embassy to know the ins and outs of the operation.

“My, if you’re so willing to blackmail me, a girl has to wonder what could possibly be the matter.” The smile in Vivienne’s face is bright now, and the expression on her face ferocious. “Not that it matters, I suppose. I shan’t speak a word of this to anyone.” Turning to Josephine, she adds, “You should choose better friends, Ambassador. The Nightingale will only chew you up and spit you out once she’s sucked you dry for information.”

“Oh, but you see Madam, it is on my information that we are here.” Josephine answers smoothly. “I need a place to speak with a contact where we will not be overheard or seen. We cannot go to them, you see.”

“And the Nightingale?”

“It involves Chantry business, I’m afraid,” Josephine replies. “She was the one who suggested your aid might be best. Can you facilitate such a conversation?”

Vivienne nods. “Naturally my dear, but are you sure? Such communication is a nasty business. It would be far better to seek your contact out.”

“Impossible, I’m afraid. Lady Montilyet is far too recognizable.” Leliana shakes her head. “I would err toward a more deliberate approach if the matter weren’t quite so pressing, but we must speak as soon as possible.”

Contemplating this, Vivienne hums and clenches her fist. The blue light of the spell dissipates. “I can still get you there. Unseen. We will need a mirror. Come. There is one large enough in the club loo.” Her body is fluid, dangerous. Josephine has never seen Vivienne use magic before, in their handful of encounters, but she knows the woman is unrivalled in her magical prowess. It was how her position in government was accepted without much fuss. Well, at least that was what Josephine had thought before Leliana’s blackmail. “I do not do this lightly, Leliana. The magic is sacrosanct – only recently rediscovered in Towers Age writing, and largely theoretical.”

“We are long past the days where the Chantry has any claim on control over magic in this world,” Leliana answers, her voice a low hum. “Your wish to preserve ancient teachings is heartening, but the Maker would never judge one who helps a friend in need.”

Vivienne nods and leads them out onto the dance floor. The repetitive thump of the base is in time with Josephine’s heart. They are playing a dangerous game now, and she’s terrified of what might happen should they be caught. Varric had a source who wished to speak to someone with the power to protect them. Josephine should have sent her people. She should not have come. Leliana disappears for a moment, no doubt to collect her weapon from the doorman. Josephine surveys the dancefloor, at the myriad bodies writhing in time with the music. Wintersend is always a party in Val Royeaux, from the high offices of government to the clubs themselves.

_Reach out_ _, reach out_ _, touch space —_

The words of the song are a blur, lights flash overhead and Josephine is drawn into the energy without a second thought. A warmth appears at the small of her back and Josephine looks up, startled to see Leliana beside her, steering her gently after Vivienne. “This is not what I’d imagined in terms of an improved party.” Leliana confesses, her head dipped low to Josephine’s ear to be heard over the music.

“I wish we could stay and dance.” This earns a laugh from Leliana, and a playful nudge of the woman’s hip as they wait outside the loo for Vivenne to chase any occupants out. When a few terrified looking students emerge, they duck inside and watch as Vivienne seals the door magically.

Vivienne presses her palm to the mirror and exhales an icy wind, writing runes on the glass with her finger. “In ancient times, elves used mirrors to cut through the fade. There are paths which still exist, should one look hard enough. It appears the Chantry of old knew something of this magic, but chose to keep it hidden.” She twisted her hand as though opening a door knob, and runes glowed start blue before transitioning into a blinding white. Shooting out from the circle of runes, the entire mirror glowed before falling away as though shattered.

Instinctively, Josephine reaches for Leliana’s hand, and grips it tightly when the space beyond the mirror swims into focus. This is magic far beyond anything Josephine has experienced before, it sets her on edge, because if Vivienne could do this, she was indeed capable of what Leliana had implied she was capable of doing.

The space is revealed to be a dingy sitting room, illuminated by a single standing lap in the farthest corner from their vantage point. A single figure sits on a stained sofa, cradling a steaming mug between their fingers. A shadow moves into the room and a second figure, this one smaller and stockier comes into view. Josephine recognizes him instantly, Varric Tethras is a recognizable figure, built like an ox even for his dwarf heritage. He pulls a flask from his pocket and offers it to the other figure – a tall, reedy looking woman with a stark scar across one cheek. “Want some, Seeker?”

“I do not drink.” Her Orlesian is thickly accented – her vowels too long in places and too short in others. Nevarran, Josephine knows the accent instantly.

“Suit yourself.” Tethras turns, and meets their gaze solidly. He’d seen them, peering through what Maker-knew-what on the other end of the portal Vivienne’s opened. He gives a mocking, half bow, a smile cracking on his clean-shaven face.  “Won’t you come through, Ambassador?”

“Can we?” Josephine hisses to Vivienne.

“Of course dear, you’ll forgive me if I don’t come along. It looks rather dirty and this dress is an original Wade and Harren, I’m sure you’ll understand.”

The reedy woman looks up sharply, and her eyes narrow. “Madam de Fer?”

Vivienne’s tone turns amused. “My dear Cassandra Pentaghast, what ever are you doing with such lowly company?”

“Hey,” Tethras tone is sharp, a warning. Josephine hears it, but she wonders if Vivienne does – or if she even cares at this point. Leliana’s threats had pushed her to action, which Josephine had not expected. Usually Vivienne allowed others to do the work while she orchestrated events from the shadows, she excelled at this. It is with certainty that Josephine steps forward, pressing her palm into the void between these two spaces and into the other space.

“Ambassador,” Tethras greets her.

“Master Tethras,” Josephine answers.

“The Seekers are moving, Vivienne,” comes the woman’s voice. Cassandra Pentaghast – a name Josephine feels she should know well but regrettably does not. “I cannot sit idly by while the Lord Seeker makes a play at politics which will result in the _ruin_ of my homeland.”

Josephine’s eyebrows shoot up and she glances to Leliana, still on the other side of the portal with Vivienne. “Is that what this is about?” Vivienne questions. She turns to Leliana. “My dear if you had only _said_ something, there would have been no need for this song and dance.”

“Then come through, Madam,” Leliana answers, her tone icy. “And involve yourself and the Chantry’s magic with our efforts to stop this _sacrilege_ before we all burn before the Maker.”

Vivienne’s face is the perfect mask of the game, but there’s a thoughtful pull to her lips. “I cannot, not directly.” She nods to Josephine. “Lady Montilyet is of Antiva, and you are of the Chantry, Sister Nightingale. I am _Orlesian_ , a member of Celene’s cabinet. I cannot involve myself in Chantry matters without appearing to be exercising undue influence. Our situation with Tevinter is so precarious, the city is poised at the brink of civil war, northern and southern magics mixing together. The Veil pulls _thin_ , Leliana. I am needed here, to keep the anchors still and the veil strong – should things go sour.”

This is not the first time Josephine has heard rumours of the veil deteriorating due to the unrest in Val Royeaux, but it is the first time she’s heard it stated in such dire terms. There are whispers, naturally, of what Vivienne de Fer’s true role in Celene’s cabinet entailed – but Josephine never imagined the circumstances as quite so dire. Josephine’s lips draw into a thin line as she contemplates what this means, what it would entail for Val Royeaux if the veil ever fell. The histories write of what happened in cities like Kirkwall long ago, when the blights were more frequent and the world fell into provincial chaos more often than not. In those stories there were two constants: war between Tevinter and Orlais, and a hero who rose from humble beginnings to save the world. Apocryphal, probably, but still inspirational.

“We all have our roles to play, don’t we?” Leliana steps forward and presses her hand to the portal. Her hand passes thought the glass as though it were naught but air, and she’s delicately stepping into the safe house, careful to keep her footing on the carpet. Josephine hadn’t realized she’d kept the shoes from the party on. Settling herself, Leliana turns back to Vivienne in the mirror. “You have my gratitude, Madam.”

“Do try to keep the détente alive, Nightingale.” She nods to Josephine. “Ambassador.” Vivienne snaps her fingers and the portal vanishes.

The woman on the couch gets to her feet. She’s tall, once she uncoils herself from the hunched position over her steaming mug of tea, taller than Josephine or Leliana. Her jacket collar is askew under the white blouse she wears tucked into dark jeans. Her boots were scuffed, well used. Josephine wondered if she was a soldier or just a punk – she carried herself like a soldier.

Before she can speak, before any of them can say anything at all, Varric Tethras steps forward and offers Josephine his hand. “Ambassador, it’s good to see you again.” When Josephine takes his hand, his handshake is firm, and he continues, “Though I gotta say, didn’t expect you to let yourself in via mirror.”

Josephine smiles. She’s always liked Varric and the world he does. “Well, you can thank Sister Nightingale for that.”

“Why would you bring  _one of them_  here?” The tall woman’s – Cassandra, Vivienne had called her – head whipped around to regard Leliana with something Josephine could only call distrust. “How do I know you are not aligned with them – doing their bidding even now – here to kill me for coming here?”

Leliana folds her arms over her chest, her chin jutting upwards defiantly. “I do not often go about murdering people. Unless they give me cause.” Her eyebrow quirks, and her smile is mischievous. “Seeker Pentaghast.”

It is then the name slots into place. Josephine gives no outward reaction, however inside she is reeling. Before Tevinter took Nevarra, before the purges following their first attempt at revolution, the Pentaghasts were one of the oldest families in Nevarra – and a fair portion of the dying noble class of the country. They’d chosen the wrong side in the revolution, aligning themselves with the working class and poor of their countrymen in the name of their shared language and culture, rather than the retention of power through allegiance to Tevinter. They’d suffered greatly for their allegiance to their homeland. Josephine didn’t think there were any of them left.

Cassandra Pentaghast is defiant, staring Leliana down like a caged animal refusing to be broken.

“I see you two know each other,” Varric breaks the standoff.

“Oh?” Josephine asks mildly. She’d learned long ago the best way to get information out of people was to allow them to share it at their own place. She never pressed, despite the excitement knotting in her belly and the visceral  _need_  to know what was going to happen once the truth came to light. Pressing made people clam up. The game was astonishingly easy if one accepted this rule. Josephine Montilyet was a kingmaker, a peace broker, and an expert in statecraft.

At Josephine’s exhale, the realization dawns across the face of the tall woman, her body rigid with tension. “You are the Left Hand.” Cassandra Pentaghast says again, her voice unwavering. “Forgive me. I did not mean to assume.” She sighs, her shoulders slumping.

Leliana puts up a hand. “A moment.” She moves then, quick and nimble, a device produced from her pocket as she traces the corners of the room. She’s checking for bugs, despite this being one of Josephine’s safe houses. Annoyance surges in Josephine, offended Leliana does not think her capable of ensuring her own safe houses are without intruding ears. There’s a lyrium-based scrambling device they’d captured during the war from Tevinter and improved in the basement and another on the roof which scramble any outbound radio transmissions and cross splice them in with the local elven punk underground radio channel which runs out of the third floor. Josephine isn’t stupid, and she’s certainly not that naïve girl that allowed Marjolaine’s little bird to draw her out into the night anymore.

“Honestly, Leliana,” Josephine finally says when Leliana makes to move to peer out the windows and draw the curtains just so. It’s for lines of sight, so she can see out but it is challenging for snipers or their scopes to see in. “Have a little faith this location is secure. My people –”

“It is foolish to trust your people. People can be bought, and as I see you did not secure the location yourself.” Leliana sighs, steps back from the window. “I am the Left Hand. You are correct,” she contemplates Cassandra for a moment. “You are a Major, unless memory fails me. You are pledged to Lucius’s service as a peacekeeper, one of that elite band of his,  _non_?”

“I lead one of the units. And yes, you are correct, I was promoted last year.”

“And what, pray, is your involvement with the Seekers of Truth?” The bite cuts into Leliana’s tone.  Josephine scowls, but can does not yet wish to speak. Leliana’s negotiation tactics are one part blackmail, one part violence, with a healthy dash of all the qualities Josephine finds most irritating about Orlesians. It is politeness that cuts like a knife and fails to be direct at the same time. Exceptionally irritating. The Seekers of Truth was the official name for the organization into which Cassandra’s rank as Major indicated she was commissioned into. It had not been used in years, not technically. They were Seekers, or the Seeker Guard, but never the Seekers of Truth officially these days. One of the ways Chantry power had waned over time.

Cassandra, though, seems to know to what Leliana is responding to, judging by the downward sweep of her thick eyebrows and the way her cheekbones seem to hollow out in the shadows from the lamplight. “I have no involvement. I go where I’m told, I follow orders. I protect the Divine and the Chantry’s interests.” Cassandra looks down at her hands. “Or at least, that’s what I thought I was doing.”

“Why don’t we all sit down,” Varric says. “There’s plenty of chairs, I’ll put the kettle on.” When Josephine and Leliana exchange a look over his head, he throws up his hands. “Both of you are wearing shoes designed to make me feel in adequate. I’d like us all on the same level.”

“Fine,” Leliana says shortly. She slumps down in an armchair opposite Cassandra, the shiny black of her stilettos an offset to the dull, scuffed leather of Cassandra’s well-worn boots.

Josephine settles herself on the arm of the chair, on hand on Leliana’s shoulder, silently requesting her to be quiet for a few minutes. To stop being ruthless long enough to show compassion. “You thought? Did you have any reason to doubt what you had been assigned to do?”

“I am a patriot, Ambassador. I did my basic training as required in Nevarra, in what passes as a military there these days. My family sent me to Orlais to become as Seeker when the rebellion broke out because they thought dying for the Chantry was a more noble death than being slaughtered in by Tevinter during the purges. For years I hated them for sending me away, I wanted to fight for my homeland. But, with things how they were after Tevinter put down the revolution, they probably saved my life.  No doubt I would have been rounded up with the rest of the revolutionaries for believing in a free Nevarra.” Cassandra shrugs off her jacket and rolls her sleeves up to reveal well-muscled forearms. Her elbows rest on her faded jeans, her feet are squarely apart. She speaks as though she’s debriefing, rather than trying to convince Leliana not to put a bullet between her eyes for treason against the Chantry. “Lucius recruited me to Command when I was still quite young, getting a commission meant a pay raise, a chance out of the muck and mire of the Anderfels and back to Orlais. I took it. It wasn’t until last year that I was told what we were actually doing.”

Leliana exhales sharply. Josephine squeezes her shoulder. Leliana says nothing. Her fingers twitching on her thigh.

“Did you not think to question it?” It is Varric who speaks now. Josephine watches as he makes and maintains eye contact, his gaze steady and comforting. He’s as skilled at this as she is, only in a different way. She’s impressed. “You tell a good story, but you were promoted over a year ago now, Major. Why not say something sooner?”

“At first it was because I didn’t fully grasp what was happening – and then it was because I was away. We did missions, first to Kirkwall then to Ferelden. We were sent all over to put seek out what the Lord Seeker called ‘rogue elements’ in the countryside. Templar or mage groups gone to ground, pushing for more freedom – that was mostly in Kirkwall, because _Maker_ , it is always something in Kirkwall. Hornet’s nest of rebellion and malcontent.” She scrubs her hand through her hair.

“In Ferelden over last winter we were tasks with waylaying ships attempting to cross the Waking Sea with supplies into occupied Jader, as apparently there was a large shipment of contraband on board which could put the Chantry operation within the city in jeopardy.” The previous winter the occupied city of Jader had attempted to throw out Tevinter forces and re-pledge their connection to Celene’s government. Josephine _still_ has a headache remembering the peace talks. “I had no idea what we were actually doing, though when we started to find humanitarian aid and food rations, the picture became clear. We were stopping Chantry shipments from reaching Jader. I protested, thinking there had been a mistake, but it was no mistake. The Lord Seeker wanted Jader lost, just as he wanted Kirkwall in chaos. Though you can no sooner catch a cloud and pin it down.

“Then we started getting sent into Tevinter’s occupied territories within the former Orlesian boarders to the North do what I thought was peacekeeping work – keep the rebels at bay and the Tevinter government at least nominally in control – to maintain the Pax after the war. We were in the Anderfels the first time I realized we were killing those who were rising up against Tevinter rule. Rounded up a whole village and then Lucius started burning books – books you can read freely here – in the South.”

“What sort of books?” Leliana asks.

Cassandra rattles off titles, the names of revolutionary works on nationalism, on self-governance, on reinterpreting the Tevinter orthodoxy into a belief that those who shared a language and a culture should be able to see themselves in their rulers. That taxation and law should reflect the social and cultural mores of the people around it. “We had no right, really, to go into the Anderfels and tell them they were better left to Tevinter rule. The Chantry had no right. Yet those were my orders.”

Swallowing, Josephine glances at Varric, who’s gotten out a notebook and is taking notes. “I think you realize, Master Tethras, that what is discussed here cannot leave this room.”

“This is a good story, Ambassador, you must understand if I’m not particularly included to do what you say in this matter.” Varric answers shortly. “Though, this still isn’t the bombshell we’re waiting for.” He nods to Cassandra. Josephine follows his gaze, watches the Major shrink under the expectation. “As she said before, this is about Nevarra.”

“Yes,” Leliana leans forward, her palms pressed together and her expression pensive. “You mentioned Lucius was making a play for politics.”

“He means to stop the talks between the Black and White Divine. The Magisterium does not wish for the talks to continue. To them, Nevarra is a jewel in their crown. To push for independence, again, after the disastrous results of the protests last time.”

“How do you know that is what the Magisterium desires?” Josephine asks. “You said you were just a soldier.”

Cassandra reaches into her pocket and removes a crumpled piece of paper and an even more battered passport. Leliana takes it and flips it open, contemplating the identification and stamps for a moment. “ _Esterna,_ ” she says. There’s a long moment where Leliana fingers twitch, where her hand dips inside her jacket. Where Josephine fears she will not be able to save Cassandra’s life, should it come to all of that. “I might have guessed they’d have someone embedded. For how long?”

“Since I joined the Seekers as a commissioned officer,” Cassandra admits. She exhales slowly. “Forgive me, sister, if I do not apologise for my subterfuge. I am a patriot first and foremost. I will not see another chance at independence slip away to maintain my viability as an asset.”

Tension radiates off of Leliana. Josephine shifts, presses her hand to Leliana’s shoulder. She does not want this to escalate. “Is there much concern,” Josephine asks, “in Nevarra that Tevinter will put down this revolutionary action the same way they put down the protests fifteen years ago?”

The purges had been bloody. Josephine remembers them almost as well as she remembers the sickening thud as the blade fell down on Jean-Claude’s neck. She remembers the fear and the distrust, living in an occupied city like Val Royeaux – where everything was so much more  _concentrated_  in terror.

“I do not know. All I know is Lucius intends to stop the talks from happening and that we are to be sent to Nevarra to put down the movement following –” she swallows, eyes fearful. “—the death of our Most Holy.”

The sharp inhalation from Leliana is matched by the way Josephine grips her shoulder. To assassinate the Divine was a suicide mission, and for such words to be uttered out loud was ruffle even the usually unflappable Leliana. Josephine’s mind raced, thinking, listening.

“Does he intend to put it on the Silks” – the name of the revolutionary band of Nevarran students and academics driving the protests this time around – “directly or just leave it to the press and police alike to follow carefully laid breadcrumbs?” Leliana’s voice was quiet, but the danger brewed there.

Cassandra let out a biting bark of laughter. “You’ll find, sister, the breadcrumbs lead to me.”

“And there’s the bombshell,” Varric chuckles.

Reaching over, Cassandra yanks his notebook from his hands. “I came to you because I knew you were connected, Varric. I did not do this for you to sell this story to the highest bidder.” She gets to her feet and pulls a cigarette lighter from her pocket, tearing the pages Varric’s filled with notes on the interview from the book and dropping them neatly into the ashtray before setting them alight.

Varric looks ready to actually do the murder Cassandra’s been charged to commit. Josephine doesn’t blame him. This story – the implications of it for the Silks – and for Nevarra as an independent country – could guarantee him international acclaim the likes of which he’d never known before. He straightens his collar and gets to his feet, hands pressing into his knees. “Listen, Seeker.” His voice is very quiet. “I understand you want to do right by your country and to not murder the Divine. I get it. But this story – this story is  _huge_. A conspiracy within the Southern Chantry to protect Tevinter’s interests and prolonged occupation of the marches and Nevarra? It’s _beyond_ a bombshell. We can show how the Silks are threatened by the very institutions they claim to wish to realign themselves with. You saw the press conference they gave the other day, proclaiming support for Divine Justinia and the Southern Chantry. We tell that story, we tell the story of the people you’ve hurt and we expose how far the violence has gotten anyone. This story has implications for fuckin’ world peace.”

“And you’re a peace journalist now?” Josephine’s tone is arch. He’s always had an angle to toward advocating peace, yes, it was part of why Josephine liked him. There was a push toward the profitability of publication which drove  _where_  his pieces received coverage. There were some elves, too, who spoke of the bias in his stories, especially around matters of elven repression in the North. Josephine’s always rather seen Varric as a compassionate humanitarian who wishes to expose the darkness in the world. Advocating peace though, Josephine knows well, doesn’t win journalists many friends.

“Always have been, Ambassador, where’ve you been?”

“Well, I for one feel as though reporting on an assignation attempt is hardly ground to call oneself a peace journalist.” Leliana says shortly, she gets to her feet and moves toward the window. The quiet harrumph that comes from Cassandra seems to indicate the Seeker agrees with her.

“What is it within the Chantry’s culture that is causing rogue elements? What is the impact of these actions on the lay folk? This isn’t simply another skirmish set to undermine the détente between Orlais and Tevinter, what are you doing to advocate a cessation of this conflict in the first place?” Varric shrugs. “There’s so much we could do with a story like this. I’d like to take it from the peace angle. Advocate non-violence from the Silks, from the Chantry. Let the Divine broker the peace.”

Cassandra lets out a frustrated sound, somewhere between a strangled cry and a groan. “What does the story matter, Varric? Our Most Holy will die tomorrow, and the Black Divine as well, if Lucius has his way. We need to intervene before anything more happens. Why are we sitting here discussing journalism? Why aren’t we moving?”

From the window, Leliana exhales. “Because we cannot simply  _act_ , Major. We are not a military unit. We are intelligence forces. Did  _Esterna_ teach you nothing about mitigating risk?”

“You mean to tell me you are contemplating letting Most Holy die?”

Josephine inhales sharply. Leliana’s faith in and relationship with the woman who became Divine Justinia is well known in intelligence circles, whispered about in conspiratorial undertones when one is trying to make comment on the Chantry’s intelligent networks. People wondered if the relationship was  _more_  than mentor and mentee. Those who’d been around long enough to remember Leliana when she ran with Marjolaine, before she disappeared into Ferelden for years, wondered if Justinia and Leliana had ever had a similar sort of relationship. Cassandra, clearly, had none of this knowledge.

For a moment, Josephine contemplates an intervention. To get to her feet and put herself between Cassandra and Leliana before they came to blows would probably be wise, but she was more interested in seeing how Leliana fixed this before it escalated further. Leliana’s reputation, outside of Josephine’s own experience was one of ruthlessness and foolish, insane risks. She would indeed go into the situation in the morning with nothing but a prayer and her stalwart belief that Andraste and the Maker would keep the divine and safe. But she’d have another plan, a better plan. The risk would be largely put at bay before she went into a situation operating largely on faith.

“I mean to move with  _deliberation_ ,” Leliana answers, her voice low and deadly. “I mean to ensure my victory before the trials even start. I prefer not to run my operations like Andraste marching into the unknown and I am sure the good Ambassador is the same. We are here because you wished to speak to the Antivan Ambassador. I am here because the intelligence is directly relevant to my livelihood. Now, tell me, what evidence do you have to prove when this attack with take place?”

Cassandra swallows. She’s nervous, probably wondering if this was a good idea. Josephine is starting to wonder the same thing. “I have orders.  _Esterna_ intercepted the intelligence.”

“There’s been no indication they have,” Josephine supplies.

“Why, Ambassador, are you implying Antiva is spying on its  _allies_?” Varric’s comment is tight and bitingly sarcastic.

“You’re all spying on each other,” Cassandra groans. “Lucius kept the details of our orders – the full detail – locked up in his office. Each of us was brief individually as to our role. I know he told some under my command that they were tasked with protecting the Divine. The attack will take place tomorrow morning. The Black and White Divine are in conclave until then, as is tradition during such negotiations between north and south. I do not know what the Lord Seeker is planning, only the role I am meant to play.” From her pocket she draws a cigarette, lights it with the lighter she used to burn Varric’s papers. Taking a long drag, she blew smoke out over the room, cloaking her face in shadow. “I imagine I should fall ill in the morning.”

“Quite,” Josephine agrees. She turns to Leliana. “Would she… break conclave to speak to you?”

“No,” Leliana answers shortly. “It will never get that far. We need evidence of this plot. Evidence beyond what Seeker Pentaghast is providing us.” She taps her chin, as though thinking, but she moves toward Josephine as though the conclusion is inevitable. “Are the phones here secure?”

Her lips pull down into a scowl. “Yes.” Josephine can feel the wrinkles at her forehead. “You have so little faith in Antiva, Leliana. One might think we’d done you some sort of harm once.”

“Only to my heart.” Leliana picks up the phone and the look on her face is a gaping wound. She rings out, speaks in tight sentences for a few minutes before cradling the phone to her chest. “Would you be able to get us into the Seeker offices?”

Josephine swallows, the barb is only meant for her ears, yet Leliana’s willing to risk the others overhearing her plight in order to get the point across. Her mind casts about, looking for the reasoning behind the barb. Their last parting was victorious, a triumph over the tyranny of Tevinter. The time before that, well, Josephine had felt well and truly used. She raises her chin, defiant, and meets Leliana’s gaze as she speaks in clipped Orlesian sentences over the phone. She doesn’t it spelled out to know Antiva is, naturally, listening in. And Josephine isn’t about to point that out to her either.

“Cassandra,” she says quietly. “May I call you that, Seeker?”

“You already have,” Cassandra answers. She turns her attention back to Josephine. “But you may.” She smiles then, and Josephine is struck by how her whole face lights up with gentle, open, friendliness. Cassandra may have the posture and personality of a soldier; she may be softer on the inside.

“Why was it Antiva you wished to speak to regarding this plot? There are any number of intelligence agencies, not to mention  _Esterna_. Why come to us?”

Leliana has stopped speaking and is watching them now, phone cradled to her chest and expression pensive. Josephine meets her gaze evenly, but she’s raised one eyebrow slightly. It is, the look is meant to read, something of a gap in their knowledge right now. One they should probably ascertain before they go much further.

The response is the slight furrowing of Leliana’s brow and a single shake of her head, there are more important issues to attend to at present, Josephine.

Josephine’s nostrils flare and her chin dips as her eyes narrow. She taps her knee through her dress, pensively. Think about it, Leliana, we don’t know why she wants  _me_  involved.

Leliana raises the phone to her ear and begins to speak again. The slight roll of her eyes says do what you will.

Cassandra doesn’t appear to notice this exchange, but Varric’s eyes flick between them with interest. Josephine wishes there were a polite way to send him away without this story screaming from the headlines tomorrow morning. There’s no time anyway. He’s along for the ride at this point. Or at least until they can divest themselves of the presence of him and his cologne.

Flicking ash from her cigarette into the tray on the battered coffee table, Cassandra contemplates it for a moment before stubbing it out entirely. “Because Antiva has cracked Tevinter’s cipher.  _Esterna_ doesn’t have that capacity. I was told, should I ever need a code breaker, to reach out to Josephine Montilyet at the Antivan embassy. That you were a modern day Crow.”

Varric snorts. “Tevinter’s cipher is based in lyrium, Seeker. There is no way anyone’s cracking that without the key – which, as you know – changes based on the lyrium vein it’s drawn from.”

“I suppose you’d know that,” Cassandra shoots back.

“It’s in my blood, Seeker, sure, but it doesn’t take a dwarf to tell you that you’ve just said is impossible.” Varric eyes Josephine curiously. “Wouldn’t you agree, Ambassador?”

“Tevinter’s lyrium supply was extremely limited during the war,” Josephine offers. “Because it had to be produced domestically in order to ensure no one could reverse engineer their machines once they started to infuse them with lyrium as an added failsafe.” She does not mention how many people died in order to ensure Antiva had a piece of that lyrium. There’s no need to go into ancient history now.

“And no one did,” Varric adds. “Otherwise the war would have been over that much sooner.”

Josephine hums her agreement, but she’s met Cassandra’s gaze evenly and nods her head ever so slightly. She can crack the code if that is what is required. They need Varric out of the room. Glancing over at Leliana, who’s still speaking on the phone, Josephine tries to convey this message as well.  From her pocket, Leliana pulls her gun and flips it so she’s grasping the muzzle in her hand. When she moves it’s lightning fast and efficient, the butt of the gun colliding with the side of Varric’s head with enough force to send him to the floor, collapsed off the chair where he’s sitting.

“Fifteen minutes,” Leliana says into the phone and hangs up. Her lips draw into a thin line. “You’ve lost this safe house, Josephine.”

“I know.” Josephine answers.  She gets to her feet and walks into the kitchen, collecting a length of rope from under the sink and handcuffs from where they are tucked in with the silverware. “We should put him in a closet.”

Cassandra exhales slowly. “Why did you do that?” She’s addressing Leliana, who’s rapped the butt of her gun on Varric’s head twice more for good measure. Josephine bends and places her fingers under Varric’s nose. He’s out cold, but breathing steadily. Good. Josephine abhors violence, but she dislikes being exposed far more. “He wasn’t… he was trying to help!”

“Be that as it may, Seeker, we would have had to remove him from our presence as soon as we left this place, and I don’t know if he would have complied. You brought him quite the bombshell of a story, after all. It’s better if he sleeps for the rest of the evening and then wakes up neatly deposited… Josie, where do you usually leave--?”

“Just outside the Grand Cathedral,” Josephine answers shortly. “But given that this location must be burned, we may keep him at the embassy for a few days until this has all blown over.” She tosses Leliana the rope and handcuffs. “I’ll call the cleaners. Cassandra, do you mind helping with ensuring Master Tethras won’t escape to ruin this operation before it can properly begin?”

“I—” Cassandra still looks rather alarmed at how things have escalated. Josephine wishes she could reassure the Seeker, who really should be more composed in this instance.

“Oh, for Maker’s sake,” Leliana hisses. “Just roll him over then.” Cassandra complies, and together they tie Varric up and manhandle him into the broom closet just off the kitchen.

Josephine waits until they are occupied before she rings the cleaners. The location is burned, she explains. There’s one individual, still living, who needs to be removed to the embassy before the night is out. She’s had to do this so many times now that it is a quick and efficient communication. By sunup, there will be no evidence this place ever was connected to Antiva. Ringing the embassy, afterwards, is still easy enough, as the safe house is connected to the central switchboard. Josephine waits for Charles to extract himself from the party. She tells him what’s happened, asks for a change of clothes and a second pair of shoes for Leliana to be couriered over to their location in the next ten minutes, and hangs up.

“The car will be here soon,” Leliana says when Josephine hangs up.

“Charles is sending you better shoes,” Josephine replies. “The courier should be quick – they’re coming from the residence.”

“Good,” Leliana runs a hand through her hair. “Cassandra. Are you armed?”

Cassandra nods. Leliana smiles. “Good. We’re going to the Grand Cathedral. I can get us into the building, but it will lend credibility if you are there. We need to break into Lucius’s office once inside.”

“My pass will get us in, and I have keys to his office.” Cassandra pulls her jacket from where it lays, discarded on the sofa and fishes around for a moment before producing keys and a pass on a small keyring adorned by what Josephine can only discern to be a small plastic figurine of a nug. She closes her eyes. Chantry types are all the same, and Leliana is sure to coo over it. As Cassandra shrugs on the jacket, Josephine catches sight of the outline of a small pistol, of a far smaller calibre than Leliana’s judging by size alone, in a pocket holder sewn into the inside of the jacket. It isn’t in the most practical of places, but she supposes when one wears jeans that are that tight, one must find other places to accommodate firearms. Once the jacket is settled, Cassandra’s attention turns to Josephine. “Are you coming, Ambassador?”

Leliana hesitates, just for a second, before she tilts her head toward Josephine and echoes the sentiment.

“Well,” Josephine answers, stepping into Leliana’s space, a fond smile playing at her lips. “You did promise me a better party.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written Cassandra's role in this piece to be an amalgamation of what the Seeker's role was historically within the Chantry, and what their equivalent is in terms of Vatican guards. As this world lacks a UN or NATO equivalent, I expanded the Chantry role to include peace keeping operations as a relatively neutral force. The Seekers, as established in the previous chapter, have become a tool for Tevinter, however it is a subtle role, which is discussed in this chapter.
> 
> Cassandra's rank is Major, which is a commissioned officer's rank within the hierarchy. Anyone who is a Seeker, as established in the games, is referred to as Seeker, to try and establish parity among the ranks. Because Cass leads a unit, she must have an equivalent rank. The leader of the seekers is still called Lord Seeker, but would carry the rank equivalent to a commander. (Really, I just wanted an excuse for Cass to have to carry a sword while in uniform because reasons.)
> 
> Historically here we're looking at potentially some strong allusions to the Velvet Revolution. Only I called them the Silks because I'm horribly original. 
> 
> Imagining Thedas with more modern technology is fascinating to me, because there is something about the way the games present it which fees so very old - because even in Europe now you can go see Roman ruins and think 'that was so long ago' but you can also go see ruins from the first and second World Wars and think the same. I wanted to try and capture that sense of timelessness, but also a timelessness brought into stark relief by the constant advance of modern technology. I tried to integrate Lyrium, as a mineral, into the modern technology, running streetlights and Enigma machines alike. 
> 
> As mentioned above, I made some minor edits to the first chapter to make this one work, plotwise. Enjoy and let me know what you think. ♥


	3. & I think that god has a sick sense of humour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Grand Cathedral is a great white scar against the sky at night, illuminated by the fireworks which dance across it. The details of the plot are revealed - and armed with this intel, a plan is hatched.

The car comes just as the courier rides up on a bicycle and tosses Josephine a duffle bag before speeding off toward the Tevinter embassy, his bicycle rocking almost violently from side to side as he pushed himself away from them. Josephine knows there is no time, and changes in the car, stuffing her dress and shoes into the bag, along with Leliana’s heels. The courier had thoughtfully selected a pair of black trousers Josephine hasn’t worn since last winter and a high-necked cream sweater against the winter’s chill. Her ramswool greatcoat and passport are tucked into the bag, along with a gun she didn’t request and doesn’t want. She passes the gun to Leliana without a word, holding it gingerly between her index finger and thumb. Leliana will only have a single gun and clip. That was all she’d ever carried in their previous encounters, instead choosing to resupply from those who fell in her path.

Adrenaline is pulsing in her ears as she tugs on her greatcoat and gathers her hair into a thick braid down her back. She has not done this in many years, at least not in any official capacity. They have agents for this, assets across the city and spread out into the Orlesian and Tevinter countryside in all directions, assets who will plan their operations and go out into the field to bring back intelligence for Josephine to digest and put to use for the prospects of peace. To go out into the field is to leave one’s self open to risk – to exposure. Antiva is a nation of crows, the history books say and the rumours whisper, but they’ll never specify why that is the case. Josephine is party to why – she’s seen the enigma machine chewing up Tevinter lyrium in the basement of the embassy, proving once more that their intelligence apparatus is the best in all of Thedas.

“Do you always just…change in front of strangers, Ambassador?” Cassandra asks, once Josephine taps her knee to indicate she can look away from the window again. Even in the semi darkness, her cheeks are bright red. It’s interesting, as Josephine thought Seekers were called to a higher purpose and were trained to put their desires second. It hardly extended to Leliana, but Josephine tended to think of her as the exception, rather than the rule.

“Josie and I are far from strangers, Seeker.” Leliana says with a faint smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. With boots on and gun in hand, she looks far more ready for what they’re about to do in the long shadow of the Grand Cathedral. Josephine wonders if this is how Leliana planned for this evening to go – if she was meant to come along on this adventure across Val Royeaux – if she was supposed to witness Leliana in action once more. Was this the fate the Maker had set for her, now that she’d involved herself and Antiva by proxy, in Chantry politics?

Josephine turns to stare at her more openly than before – her face open and her expression inquisitive.  _Who are we if not lovers?_

Leliana raises an eyebrow, and meets Josephine’s gaze evenly. _Are we not that now?_ Comes the question.

  _Say what you want to say_ , Josephine answers with twitch of her lips in the half darkness.  _Since you’re being so cold_.

Leliana’s hands cradle the gun. She looks down it, and then back across to Josephine, expectant.  _You first._

“Once, Leliana helped Antiva get food into the city during the blockade,” Josephine explains. The details of that night, of dancing over the wall and into the darkness of that punk club. The way it was easier to let Leliana kiss her in that darkness than it was to try and find the words to articulate what existed beneath the superficial want she’d felt watching Leliana dismantle the arms of yet another Tevinter soldier with a few well-placed punches and assurances whispered to Josephine that he’d wake up with a headache but no worse for the wear. She’d done that for Josephine that night, avoided the violence Josephine’s intelligence reports out of Ferelden and the Marches indicated she was more than capable of committing with abandon. “Antiva, and the people of Val Royeaux, owe her a great debt.”

“Were you involved with the breaking of the blockade, Ambassador?” Cassandra asks. Her tone is mind, but she’s shifting uncomfortably at her proximity to the pair of them, so carefully not touching while maintaining intense eye contact. It is, Josephine would lament later, something of a terrible habit they share. “I knew that it was a stroke of luck there was manifest mishap between Jader and Val Royeaux and that the ship was allowed in in the first place. I had no idea that Antiva was directly involved.”

Josephine shrugs, a smile playing at her lips. She won’t answer that, and if Cassandra truly is  _esterna_ , she’ll know better than to push. Everyone suspected the Chantry had orchestrated the breaking of the blockade as the Divine herself was quite ill at the time. It was, after all, part of why Beatrix fell and Justinia rose. Starvation does that to a person.

“I met Josephine when I was very young, just a girl, really.” Leliana says quietly. “It was so long ago now that I hardly recall why we met in the first place.”

“You were singing in a café,” Josephine supplies softly – hurt colouring her voice despite her best efforts. “I was…”

“Playing anarchist.” Leliana supplies, a wry grin on her cheeks. “No different than now, though you dress it up better.”

“ _Maker_ , it was a long time ago, wasn’t it?” Josephine hopes Leliana will let this go. “Peace can’t be found in protest, Leliana. I learned that during those days. Sustained, constant work over many years, perhaps, but the barricaded town square, alight with torches and  _l’espirt de_   _la revolution_  will not create meaningful political change.”

“Do you think the Silks can’t achieve what their ends and an independent Nevarra?” Cassandra’s question is spoken with a quiet, nervous tone. Josephine wonders what this costs her, to hear such contradictory political views to her patriotism and her belief in the Silk’s cause. Her family has lost much to the conflict as it is. Perhaps Josephine should have chosen her words more carefully and remembered she was not within the company of those who, while distrusted, Josephine could rely upon to be honest about the realities of the political situation they found themselves within.

Josephine purses her lips. Should this night go awry, the Silks will never be anything ever again. She contemplates the answer, how the ends could be achieved given the current climate, and what lengths she suspects the Lord Seeker’s Tevinter-backed plot may go to in order to guarantee the Silks are silenced. “I believe the public sentiment is there, in Nevarra, for independence. However, it will be achieved through diplomacy, probably brokered between the Silks and Tevinter by the White Divine. I intend to ensure these talks will happen. Conclave will end and the Black Divine will make his opinion felt, I think, but he will not act unless he is forced. The North knows their Chantry’s hold is tentative in Tevinter. As a nation, Tevinter has long since divested themselves of the Maker or have come to the Southern Chantry.”

Cassandra’s chin juts up, her expression stoic and her eyes glinting in the blue of the lyrium streetlights above as the car moves them through Wintersend revellers toward the Grand Cathedral. “The Lord Seeker means to force him to act.”

There’s a tell-tale click as Leliana checks the magazine of the gun Josephine’s handed her. Josephine watches the practiced motions of her hands as she ensures all is in place. There’s something vaguely meditative about the way Leliana moves, no motion out of place, a picture of careful control and daringly long looks. A small, tight smile flits across Leliana’s lips as she slides the clip back into place and clicks the safety off. She winks at Josephine, and the smile grows just a bit larger before it dissipates, serious once more. “Are you meant to be anywhere, Seeker – as a part of this plot?”

Shaking her head, Cassandra glances to Josephine. The leather of her jacket creaks as she shifts in the car’s seat. “Not until three bells. There’s a rooftop where I’m to take position and await orders. There are several of us meant to go on watch. I am not a marksman by trade, which I believe is to be the intent. We move as suits us, once in position.”

“He means to make the call at apparent random.” Leliana follows the line of thought effortlessly.

It is logical, Josephine reasons, position your best soldiers at points around the square with clear lines of sight to the balcony where the Divine will address the crowd in the square, and wait for the moment to strike. Still, the plan lacks the level of finesse which would characterize a Tevinter intelligence operation. The Seekers are a military unit, certainly, but their handlers are Tevinter intelligence. Josephine finds herself thinking of her counterpart at the Tevinter embassy, wondering if this is the sort of chaos his office likes to court.

Murdering the Divine. It’s preposterous, but it will save Tevinter Nevarra and potentially unify them with the whole of Southern Thedas in outrage over the murder of such a beloved figure as Justinia. Josephine’s gaze slid over to Leliana, wondering if she had seen the same thread of possibility and was trying to attempt to stop the same.

“Or perhaps he wishes to appear as though he is prepared to guard the breaking of Conclave,” Josephine suggests, mildly. “And imply there is a rogue agent within his ranks. Cassandra mentioned the signs would point back to her – she will be meant to take the shot.”

“He wouldn’t telegraph the move like that,” Leliana answers. Cassandra nods her agreement. Tapping the gun against her knee, Leliana ponders this for a moment before holstering it with the other, thoughtfully (and unnecessarily) included addition to the bag of Josephine’s change of clothes. A shoulder holster for two guns. Josephine had rolled her eyes when she’d found it, tossed it with the boots to Leliana without thinking twice. She’d shrugged it on without question. Always best to be prepared, Josephine supposes. “Lucius is smart. He’d lay a false trail.”

“Yes,” Cassandra agrees. “He would.”

* * *

The Grand Cathedral is a looming ghost of white stone. It dwarves all structures around it, with stained glass windows dating back to the late First Dragon Age, and white spires so pristine they scrape the sky like beams of light amid the dirty dank mess of Val Royeaux’s more industrial downtown, cast long shadows over the circular square which predates even the White Spire on the other side of town. Overhead, fireworks and light spells joined in harmony as the city celebrated the end of another winter. A crowd of onlookers gathered around the central statue to Andraste, perched atop a tall obelisk at the centre of the unfurling star which was the designer’s rendition of the Maker’s light. She cast a black mark long across the square, a dark line pointing, Josephine thought darkly as she tugged her jacket collar up and cast her eyes low, almost directly to the entry to the Seeker’s offices and the headquarters of the Divine’s special guard.

They’d left the car just outside the square, unable to progress any further before the crowds of onlookers for the fireworks and magic show became too thick. Leliana takes Josephine on her arm and allows Cassandra to lead them through the throngs toward the square and the Seeker offices beyond. It is slow going, and with Cassandra’s confession of a time limit earlier than the breaking of Conclave at dawn, haste bit into Josephine’s consciousness like a nagging wound. They had to hurry.

Glancing up at the Serault Windows, illuminated beautifully against the night sky and ghostly white stone of the Grand Cathedral’s imposing structure, Josephine’s breath catches. “It’s beautiful,” she murmurs in Leliana’s ear. “To see the old ghost so colourful.”

Someone has tagged the base of the Andraste-capped obelisk, a sprawling message in neon pink and beautiful green, stylized and declaring Andraste, and the Chantry, for the dogs of war. Another tag, paint still dripping down the beautiful white marble, declared victory for the Silks. Looking at it, Leliana’s lip curls into something of a wry smile. “They have no idea what we do, do they?” she comments mildly. “How hard we work to keep them safe.”

“How could they?” Josephine counters. “Tevinter is experimenting with openness but they are by no means experts in it. Celene’s government is much the same. There’s safety in secrets.”

“Quite,” Leliana hums quietly. “Though the best secrets are kept to one’s self.”

Josephine turns, in the long shadow of the obelisk and the exploding fireworks overhead. Annoyance gnaws at her, for they’re running late and they’ve split with Cassandra to meet at the door to the Seeker’s offices, crossing the square separately so Cassandra will not be seen in the company of the Left Hand unless absolutely necessary. They have to  _go._

Leliana is standing with her arms folded, regarding the graffiti. “You know, Josie,” she says, her voice still mild and understated. Josephine can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd around them. “You know far more of my secrets than anyone else alive – and I’ve spent what, two nights in your company?”

“Well, I don’t think you can argue those two nights weren’t memorable.”

A hardness creeps into Josephine’s voice as she steps closer to Leliana. It’s one she doesn’t quite recognize at first, for this is not her game, but it soon slots into place. This is the girl who was discarded once – and who did much the same to Leliana the second time. They abandoned each other to the repercussions of their actions together. People Josephine cared deeply for died. Divine Beatrix was killed in the violence which so ruled this city following the blockade. And from the chaos, or perhaps because of it, the quelling presence of Revered mother Dorothea ascended her to become Divine. These are two women who have hurt each other for no other reason than in the name of them game itself.

 _First we try,_ the old adage goes _, then we trust._

Josephine still isn’t sure she trusts Leliana.

“I’d rather…” Leliana looks down at her feet and bites her lip. She seems to steady herself, her expression falling into the careful neutrality of the game once more. “I’d rather we didn’t hurt each other anymore, Josie. After tonight.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Josephine asks. She raises an eyebrow at Leliana, daring her to say something more meaningful.

Leliana reaches into her pocket, draws out a cigarette, and lights it. It’s a stalling tactic, and by the way her eyes meet Josephine’s over her fingers and the glowing embers, they both know it. “We could…try to remain friends afterwards, this time.”

“Then no one can die,” Josephine crosses her arms. Of this she is absolutely resolute.

Exhaling smoke, Leliana looks across the square to the door where a solitary figure is now conversing with one of the posted guards. Cassandra has reached the offices. They have to move. “You know I cannot guarantee that, Josie.” Her face is lit in green, and then blue, as the colours burst in the sky. “This isn’t the business for preserving life.”

Sucking in a long breath, Josephine prepares herself to speak as an Antivan does where there is something which needs to be  _said. “_ You take foolish risks, Leliana. I’ve followed your career closely – seen what you did in the Marches – what the Chantry attempted to do in Ferelden. You play the game like you want to walk into the Maker’s arms.” Josephine wraps her arms around herself, cold despite her greatcoat. “I don’t believe that’s what you want, not truly. Where is the girl I met in that café, the one who took me to the river and kissed me as the sun set?  You were so full of ideas then – ideas for  _peace_ , and for a future where Orlais was  _free._ ”

“That girl died –”

“If you say with the revolution so help me…” Josephine trailed off, seeing the small, awkward grin on Leliana’s face, illuminated in purple shifting to red as light burst overhead. She steps forward, grabs the lapels of Leliana’s jacket and pulls her as close as she can without attracting too much attention from the gaggle of elves and half-elves clad in leather and torn denim, their hair spiked as they huddled together, watching the fireworks.

Leliana is warm this close, she smells of cigarettes and the perfume from the party. Josephine breathes her in, nostrils flaring as she barrels on, because she’s Antivan and she doesn’t know how to stop once she’s started. This isn’t the time or the place, but Josephine know when they’re _less_  likely to be overheard than this moment, right now.  “Do you know what it felt like, to open my briefs one morning and see you made Left Hand, returned to Val Royeaux without so much as a hello? Do you know what it felt like, to have spent three years worrying about you after the blockade broke and you disappeared off into Ferelden to meddle with their politics and that election on behalf of the Divine’s machinations? There was an  _insurrection_ within the country, Leliana, after that election. You could have been killed, putting the Chantry’s preferred golden boy into power. I saw the reports, Leliana. You made the papers there, and  _here_. The Chantry’s representative supporting the disputed government and working against the popular sentiment of the country.”

“Of  _half_ the country,” Leliana counters. “The other half supported what we did.”

“There was a  _civil war,_ Leliana.”

“Well,” Leliana begins, as though she has a perfectly reasonable explanation for  _that_ particular detail.

“Don’t you ‘well,’ me.” Josephine jabbed finger into Leliana’s chest, right where she knew, beneath the layers of clothing, there would be a twisted knot of skin from where a lyrium bullet passed through her shoulder and too close to her heart, the magical resonance causing her heart to stop entirely. The report had been very specific, after all.  “I know how you went into the Deep Roads looking for Dark Spawn to give them something to unify against. I know what happened down there, how you  _did_  die, briefly.”

(Josephine still recalls that cable coming through, the printer whirring as the computers decoded and put the message into understandable Orlesian. How she’d read it and her knees had given out, Zevran Arainai’s succinct words describing the operation – how the Nightingale had fallen during a firefight. How they’d had to have a mage in the strike team pull her back from the brink of death. She’d sat there in the middle of the basement room where they kept the enigma machine, reading the cable over and over, knowing she could not respond. They’d found here down there, hours later, the paper ripped to shreds and a map of the Deep Roads near the ruins of Orazamar unrolled on the conference table. She had a meeting with the Ravani ambassador but she could not leave the basement operations hub for her need to  _save_  this woman who was off trying to start blights to end wars.

It was then, Josephine realized that she cared far more for the Nightingale than she’d initially realized.)

When Leliana’s eyes narrow, Josephine feels a small, triumphant smile pull at the corners of her lips. It’s quickly dashed when Leliana’s expression relaxes and she rolls her eyes playfully. “I won’t ask how Antiva found its way to  _that_  particular piece of information. We kept it quiet.”

“Well, we are a nation of Crows.” Josephine is maybe a little smug and maybe a little disappointed, because knowing that she’s managed to slip an agent under Leliana’s nose and having his presence not be rejected is a point in and of itself. But knowing that her ruse had been sniffed out was disappointing. And she’d had such high hopes for Zevran as an asset, too. “And I was…concerned.”

“Sending one of the worst examples of your countrymen’s historic prowess at the game that I have ever seen to keep me an eye on me hardly counts as showing concern, Josephine. If anything, it’s sabotage.”

Her fingers are still tangled in Leliana’s jacket, but it is Leliana who tugs her closer still. Holds here there where their breath is fogging the same bitingly cold winter’s air. It is an almost, or perhaps a promise. Josephine’s breath catches, knowing she could close her eyes, lean forward, and say all she cannot put into words to Leliana. But she cannot. She does not trust Leliana enough to do such a thing, and to act without thought when there is  _so much_  they have left to do seems foolish.

Still, her tongue dances across her lips, and her eyes flick down to the full swell of Leliana’s red-painted lips. They’re smiling at her, Leliana’s eyes half closed and lips slightly parted. She’s waiting, Josephine realizes, waiting for Josephine to break first.

 _Montilyets are unyielding_ , her grandmother taught her.  _We do not bow down at the first offering. No, we wait until the pot is sweetest before we strike._

It was a lesson about Wicked Grace, about life.

Josephine would not kiss Leliana yet. She feels the heat of Leliana’s hand through the three layers of clothing at her hip, burning hot as she forces herself to think of what is at stake. This isn’t the time for romance, no matter how much Josephine would want it.  “I—” she begins. Looking away from how Leliana’s eyes appear almost hopeful, she shakes her head. “Not yet. Not until...” Her jaw forms a resolute line. “When this is over.”

“You know what the Left Hand is expected to do, Josephine,” Leliana’s tone is low as she pulls away. “I was charged with a task by Most Holy and I executed it. The desired outcome was achieved. The war stopped. Order is restored.”

Josephine, because she cannot kiss Leliana, because she desperately wants to, because it would be so much easier to kiss her and say,  _I wish you hadn’t disappeared. I wish we could be more. I wish you had come back home with me that morning knowing the people of Val Royeaux would eat for the first time in days. I wish I hadn’t spent years scared out of my mind that you were going to die in Ferelden during the war. I wish I could trust you to run into a fight like you’re about to die._ Josephine steps back, taking her hands back and forcing her breathing to be regular.

“No one can die. I can’t expect people not to get hurt but surely we can end this without anyone dying. Not you. Not me. Not Cassandra.”

“What of the Silk meant to kill the Divine?” Leliana steps away, produces another cigarette and lights it. Her cheeks, in the multi-coloured light of the fireworks above, are flushed. “If it was not the Lord Seeker’s intention for that patsy to be Cassandra, I can make no guarantees other than it will be quick.”

“Then we must find evidence of it, and attempt to head them off before they can act. That is what we do,  _non?_ ”

Leliana smiles. “That, Josie, is exactly what we do.” She holds out her hand and Josephine takes it, allowing herself to be drawn through the throngs of people to a corner not far from the doorway Cassandra is loitering in front of, arms folded, speaking to the pair of uniformed guards on each side of the door.

The building here is old – retrofitted to provide the illusion of modern security, and security cameras are mounted high above. Leliana produces her gun, and pulls a silencer from a jacket pocket, screwing it in place. Her face is a look of grim determination as she angles her body just so. She’s leaning in like she means to kiss Josephine, pushing Josephine against the wall like this is some lover’s tryst. Josephine puts her hands on Leliana’s shoulders, and schools her face resolute.

Not yet.

Leliana pulls a face, a twisted frown, but when she pulls back, she glances up, with only her eyes moving. “Blind spot,” she whispers.

Above them, there are two cameras on a rotating pan of the square. Immediately below them, where they stand now, there’s an arc of maybe a meter that isn’t covered by either camera’s view. There’s another camera, Josephine can see its red recording light blinking in the dark across from them, but it’s facing away from them, focused on the revelry in the square.

“Shooting them out is foolish,” Josephine hisses. “You  _work_ here.”

“Can’t have Lucius knowing who thwarted his plans,” Leliana answers. From her pocket, she produces a glowing blue bullet and slides the clip from her gun and pops the bullet from the chamber and the first from the magazine. She places them into Josephine’s great coat pocket, kissing her cheek and sliding the glowing bullet into the clip and then chambering it once the clip is secured in gun once more. “And this will just cause a short for a few – maybe three – minutes for us to get inside.”

“I wasn’t aware the Chantry approved of using lyrium to enhance weaponry,” Josephine wrinkles her nose. “I thought it was considered a reversion back to the old Templar ways and no one wants that.”

The weaponry was controversial even in the more fringe circles of intelligence for the way it interfered with the magical interfaces upon which much of the world’s technological infrastructure was built. Josephine personally thinks it has its uses, and the means can indeed justify the ends as the fusion of magic and technology marched ever forward. Stopping wars without bloodshed, creating peace, some thought it a magic bullet and sure to be abused. Josephine favoured a more even-handed approach. Peace could not be forged through war, conflicts could not be resolved in a day, and it took the escalation of threats to safety before parties were even willing to come to the table. The problem with lyrium is that it is addictive, and could create monsters. The Chantry banned its use for a reason.

Leliana says nothing, but points the gun at the juncture box between the two cameras (where Josephine assumes the wires and CRT cables will connect back to the main security offices) and fires a single muffled shot. She relaxes against Josephine, tucking the gun away and kissing her cheek. “We aren’t Templars anymore. We don’t lock up our mages in Orlais.”

 _Bold,_  Josephine thinks. Her cheeks are burning.

They slip inside the door. Cassandra waits a solid sixty seconds before following them inside. “Will there be guards?” Josephine asks.

Cassandra runs her hand through her hair, contemplating the dimly lit hallway before them. There are no internal cameras, but still her eyes sweep the place as though she’s planning a strike. She draws her gun from her jacket, chambering a bullet. “I’m not sure. Lucius would have most posted around the square, monitoring for undesirables. Whoever remains…”

Josephine reaches out, rests her hand on the pistol. “No one is dying today.”

“That’s a fools dream, Ambassador,” Cassandra replies curtly. She moves her hand around Josephine’s touch and raises the pistol into ready stance. “Stay behind me. Nightingale, will you watch my back?”

Leliana hums her agreement and takes a place behind Josephine, her gun trained on the door where they came in. They move down the hallway as a unit, Leliana and Cassandra taking turns checking each door handle as they walked by. The rooms are either locked or empty, Cassandra is quickly able to rattle off their purposes. They aren’t places where people would linger behind locked doors, but rather armouries and training facilities – rooms that once housed lay sisters when the Grant Cathedral was more of a functioning place of worship and less a concentration of bureaucratic and legal power.  A few are offices, but those office’s owners, are, for the most part Cassandra’s superiors or her peers. Most are away on assignment at the border, or on leave as it was a holiday, Cassandra explains as she clears another room. None would be spending time in these cramped spaces.

Turning at the end of the hallway, Josephine finds herself looking over Cassandra’s shoulder at a large room with a glass door, the blazing eye of the Seekers of Truth etched into the doorway. The ceiling was low, as this was a historical building, and exposed beams long-since stained black with woodsmoke lined the ceiling. Computer monitors dominated the office space, their whirring processor towers and winking screens emitting the familiar high-pitched whir of lyrium grinding in cold cathodes tubes and forcing the lyrium to change from its resting blue to red and green. Josephine had been able to hear the whine her entire life, though most children grew out of it. Both Leliana and Cassandra had been in war zones, this room was probably silent and abandoned to them, not full of the feedback of digital ghosts.

There is a camera mounted in the far corner of the hallway, opposite the doors into the Seeker’s offices. It’s on a pan, facing down the far hallway at the moment – they have maybe thirty seconds before it turns and catches them.  Leliana clicks her tongue and switches out another bullet in her gun for the lyrium bullet. She fires the shot silently and rechambers an actual bullet into her gun in one fluid motion. The camera fizzles and then goes still.

“We have maybe two minutes to incapacitate anyone inside,” Leliana’s almost breathless.  Josephine turns, glances over her shoulder, Leliana’s eyes are shining and her hair is frizzing slightly as they adjust to the warmer air inside. It frames her face like a fiery halo.

“There should be a desk sergeant and one duty officer,” Cassandra whispers. Her gun is trained on the door. “Breakroom is on the far end, but the light’s off.”

“Could they be sleeping?” Leliana asks. Her back is pressed against Josephine, sandwiching her into the protective circle of her and Cassandra’s firearms. It is a place Josephine doesn’t mind being, but she wishes they weren’t armed – that they didn’t need guns to pull off this intel grab. She hesitates, and then lets her fingers brush against Leliana’s, knowing she will lower her gun and not shoot the two approaching shadows coming up the hallway.

“Shift just changed at ten bells,” Cassandra is saying.

Josephine turns neatly, putting herself behind Cassandra as Leliana surges forward. With the camera out, there is no time to dallying and these Seekers cannot see Cassandra or Josephine. Leliana flattens herself against the wall, taking advantage of the blind corner as the shadows grow closer, and then ducks around it and out of sight.  There’s a yelp, and then a thud. Josephine sucks in air quickly, the violence setting her on edge. A second thud, a pause, and Leliana reappears, her hair mussed, around the corner. “We have ninety seconds to move these gentlemen to somewhere where they won’t be caught unconscious on camera should anyone else bother to look.”

They shove the men into the maintenance closet, Josephine’s arms burn with the effort of picking up a man twice her size, even with help.  Josephine pulls a vacuum cleaner before they shut the door, saying nothing to Cassandra or Leliana as she wheels it back to the entrance of the Seeker’s office. This office is bugged, she’s certain, if not by Leliana herself, then definitely by Tevinter (Antiva has other ways of tracking the Seeker’s movements). She stands at the door and watches as Leliana jabs a knife into the lock on the closet door, and twists it before jerking it out and flipping it shut and away into her jacket pocket. This, Josephine knows from experience, will stripping the pins away from the tumblers and making the lock exceptionally challenging to pick.

Inside the Seeker’s office it is cool and quiet, save for the hum of the computer monitors. Josephine doesn’t relax, but the tension in her shoulders recedes a bit when they check the room and find themselves alone and away from cameras. This close to so many computers the interference would make any picture captured less than ideal. There was talk, especially within military intelligence circles, of creating a new type of screen which would allow for better surveillance at military installations, but so far, there had been little indication of the technology progressing past lyrium CRT.

Bending down, Josephine plugs the vacuum into the wall and lets it whir to life. It creates a white noise which will allow them to speak in hushed tones without being recorded any listening devices. Josephine knows offices, this is right around the time the cleaning staff would come through, too, should it not be a holiday. “Stay away from the door,” she says, her voice a low undertone. “We need to be out of here or silence once the logical amount of time passes to vacuum this office.”

Cassandra nods, and moves toward a shut door at the far end of the room, well away from the door. She tries the door, wrapping her hand with the scarf she had tied around her neck.

“I could get that for you,” Leliana says, her tone gentle. She’s produced what looks like a cigarette case from her pocket, but it opens to reveal a well-cared for set of lock picks. Cassandra nods, steps aside, and allows Josephine to continue her slow path around the room with the vacuum. It’s a terrible cleaning job, but Josephine has a staff for this usually. It’s about appearances, really, and the sound it vacuum masks.

Leliana has barely knelt down to contemplate the lock before its falling open at her fingertips. There’s a smugness to her face Josephine recognizes. She knows she’s _very_ good at what she does. “I really must speak to Lucius about his office security.”

“Do it later,” Cassandra answers.

The pair of them steal into the office. Josephine leaves the vacuum running at the door and tucks herself into the small space neatly beside Leliana. They can’t speak inside this space, because it is surely bugged to the point where even the white noise of the vacuum will not cover their conversation.  Instead, they page through files and desk drawers tossing the place with the neat precision of spycraft.

At the base of Lucius’s desk, Josephine finds a carved space in the leg which hides a small piece of metal hammered into the shape of a diamond. It is a key, she knows, but to where? She casts about the desk, looking for anything where such a device might fit, before dropping to her knees to inspect the underside of the central desk drawer.  Sure enough, at the far back corner there is a small indentation and a few black scoring marks. She slides the key home and waits, pushing until she hears a click. She prays it isn’t a trap.

A hidden panel opens at the side of the desk, knocking into Josephine’s leg before it can open fully.  Leliana’s hand shoots out and she catches the door and pushes it closed. Her lips are a thin line as she runs a finger along a silvery thread. There was a trap, Josephine realizes, as Leliana turns her hand sideways and reaches through the door while the thread is still slack. She pulls out a grenade of Antivan Fire and sets it carefully on the desk once she’s ensure the pin is still firmly in place. Raising an eyebrow, she opens the hidden partition the rest of the way and tugs out the small stack of files and small cloth wrapped bundle.

Inside the bundle is a miniaturized version of the same machine which currently churns away in Josephine’s basement. Cassandra’s breath catches, but it isn’t that surprising for Josephine to see one here. They live in a city that is half in Tevinter as it is, and seeing Tevinter manufacturing and engineering within the offices of high-ranking Chantry officials is hardly new. Tevinter developed Leliana’s lyrium bullets after all, weaponizing the raw mineral’s ability to interfere with circuitry into a tool for spycraft. They developed the technology that goes within the computer monitors as well, though it’s The Qun that have created the systems and chips which now power the computers themselves. The world is getting smaller, and now the wars are fought in secret – if they’re fought at all.

She finds a pen and a piece of paper in the top drawer of Lucius’s desk. She sets it on top of the hard surface of the desk so no impression can be taken of her printing later, and writes:

_Does he communicate with the Black Divine’s guard through code?_

She taps Cassandra’s elbow, and directs her attention to the message, eyebrow raised in the dim light spilling in from the main room.

Cassandra shakes her head, leans forward, and takes the pen. Her handwriting is scattershot, flowing chaotically across the page beneath Josephine’s neat, cramped script.

_We have conference calls and open communication. 4th Nevarran Accord. _

She underlines this final point twice.

Ah yes, the accord that fell to pieces when the blight happened and the ten-year war for influence in the aftermath between Tevinter and Orlais. Josephine taps her chin, glancing at Leliana, who is scanning the documents with rapid speed and moving to the photo copier in the corner to make copies of what she deems relevant. Leliana turns, raises an eyebrow, and shakes her head. She doesn’t know anything about why Lucius would have an enigma machine either.

_We should leave this here._

Cassandra shakes her head.

 _It will be how he gets orders_ , she writes. _If he does not have it, he cannot proceed. Success?_

Leliana steps between them and slaps a piece of paper on the table. She points to a line of code and then the enigma machine in Cassandra’s hands. Josephine, grateful she spoke to Charles earlier and knows the day’s codes – if for a few more minutes until they reset at midnight, sets the machine by spinning the dials in sequence. First the Alpha, then the Omega – and finally the three middling figures which gave them so much trouble back during the war. It’s precise work, hard to do in dim light silently. Neither of her companions comment on her skill with the device as she works, even when both are fully aware that Josephine should have no knowledge of such things as an Ambassador to a neutral country.

Her tongue caught between Josephine punches in the coded message and watches the readout carefully. The message is an address, which she writes down below their scribbled conversation. She thinks the address is in North Val Royeaux, but she can’t be sure without looking a map. Following the address is a time, some two hours from now, and a radio frequency from one of the long-range wireless frequency transmitters an Antivan engineer had developed earlier in the year. Josephine frowns. How had Tevinter gotten it so quickly?

The name, and the circumstances, slot into her mind perfectly – and honestly, it’s good to be _owed_ when going into enemy territory.

Josephine takes the paper, tucks it into her pocket, and puts the pen back where she found it. She glances at the clock on the wall. Two minutes to midnight. She points to it, and gestures up to the smoke stained ceiling.  The grand finale of the fireworks display will wrap in two minutes, as the clock strikes twelve bells. They should use the chaos of that moment to get out of these offices and regroup.

Cassandra moves to take care of the vacuum, switching it off and moving to tuck it into the breakroom beyond. As she vanishes around the corner, Josephine lets out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. There are too many bodies in this cramped space, and now it’s just her, and Leliana – making her final photo copies and tucking the papers away into the desk once more.  Josephine’s fingers shake and she clenches them into a fist.

Whatever Lucius is planning; he needs to be across the city in two hours. Josephine moves to the map of the city on the wall, tracing her finger down the avenues until she finds the address. “Damn _,_ ” she breathes in quiet Antivan.

Leliana presses a finger to her lips, pausing as she puts the grenade trap carefully back into place. When she sees where Josephine’s finger rests on the map, her face falls and her lips draw into a grim frown.

They have to go across the wall. In under two hours.

* * *

Slipping out of the Seeker headquarters and cutting across the courtyard to the Left Hand’s offices is easy enough. Once they’re inside and out of sight, Josephine exhales a shaky breath. The offices of the Left Hand of the Divine aren’t a place she’d ever thought she’d have the pleasure of being inside. She looks around, taking in the sparse décor and small devotional in the corner. Candles are burnt down to nubs there, and wax crawls across the offering table. Andraste looks out over them, her carved face as impassive as Leliana’s. Josephine makes a sign on her chest, out of respect more than out of devotion, and presses her fingers to her lips. Perhaps it is foolish to hope Andraste will protect them as they move to stop this plan, but perhaps it’s wise to put her faith in what will make Leliana and Cassandra calmer. If that is the Chant of Light, then so be it.

The room smells of incense and the barest hint of Leliana’s perfume. An ashtray sits on the corner of the large wooden desk which dominates the far wall of the room. There is no computer workstation in here, or any filing cabinets. There’s hardly anything in this room at all. A few simple wall hangings depicting various iconography of the chantry hang on the wall over the desk. Josephine takes them in, her mind elsewhere, back in the Lord Seeker’s office and the implications of what they’d found.

“Do you have a map?” she asks.

Leliana pulls down a map and unrolls it over the desk, nudging a stapler and tape dispenser out of the way.  She must never work in this room, Josephine thinks.  Or else she wouldn’t have such a non-functioning stapler. “What was the address again?”

From her pocket, Josephine produces the sheet of paper. “12 Rue de Saint Germain, Dix-huitième Arrondis,” She taps the neighbourhood, neatly bisected by the river to the south and the wall midway through. Rue de Saint Germain is a winding street near the boundary with the 19ème _Arrondis_ , weaving through a residential area before it starts to meander northwards into a business district. 12 Rue de Saint Germain is near where the road spills out into what has been renamed The People’s Square. Once, a great act of rebellion by the Seekers of Truth, corrupted by the toxic chemical compound of red lyrium, plotted to kill a Divine there – and the second Inquisition was formed. Now it’s just another place of commerce. Josephine’s passed by it once or twice, on her way to the Tevinter Embassy or the Magisterial Police’s offices in the next _Arrondis_.

“An apartment building?” Josephine squints at the map. It’s hard to tell.

From a drawer in the desk, Leliana produces a phone book and begins to page through it, tongue caught between her teeth. Josephine starts to ask how she’s going to find the address if a phone book is arranged by names, but she realizes this is the Chantry directory and is arranged by neighbourhoods and property addresses. They probably use it for Chantry fundraising campaigns – to determine how many of the faithful live in each building for mailers. The Orlesian Government is very adamant about the separation of powers with their boarders – religion has nothing to do with matters of state – officially. A tool like this probably saves a great deal of money.

“Yes,” Leliana answers, she sets the phone book down on the table with a solid thump. “Twelve units all told.”

“And no apartment number,” Josephine scowls. “That will take time.”

Cassandra looks at the address and the map and shakes her head. “We can’t get across the wall that fast, forget trying to figure out which apartment we have to go to. Not on a holiday. To try to cross without proper papers would be suicide.”

Leliana hums, plucking the paper from Josephine’s hands and bending to unlock a small cupboard at the base of her desk. From it she draws a pair of small, portable radios and a plastic container which Josephine leans forward to get a better look at.  Inside are the smallest ear pieces she’s ever seen. Her eyes go wide, and she _wants_ them for herself and her people. “What’s the range?”

“Five miles. We can talk anywhere in the city,” Leliana answers.  She’s tuning the radio now, and then bending for a second one. “I think we need to prioritize our actions right now, as Cassandra is right, it will be almost impossible to get across the wall to this location in time at this hour. I know I promised, but we may need to neutralize the threat more aggressively than just stopping the transmission of the kill order in the first place.”

Josephine taps her chin. “I may have a way.” When the stare at her, she adds, “Across the wall.” She tilts her head to Leliana. “Is that line secure?”

“We’ll be listening,” Leliana answers. At Josephine’s affronted look, she rolls her eyes and laughs. “Honestly, Josie, you know as well as I do that someone is  _always_  listening. Better it be friends than enemies, _non?_ ”

A silence follows. Josephine’s frown deepens, she doesn’t like the idea of exposing one of her assets, but their options are limited on this timetable. She swallows, her chin jutting out. “I want it scrubbed. Before we leave. I want the next two minutes of this line only scrubbed from your records.”

“Who are you protecting?” Leliana shoots back. She tosses Cassandra a radio and sets to work tuning the other.

“A friend,” Josephine explains. “Who will not take kindly to the Chantry meddling in their affairs.” She softens her face, trying to look innocent, and flutters her eyelashes at Leliana. That gesture, in itself, is a promise. One Josephine fully intends to make good on.

Leliana stares hard at Josephine for a moment, before she digs in her pocket. She produces a small blue box, which glows a pale blue as she clicks it onto the back of the phone. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

“ _Gracias_.”

Waving her away, Leliana answers in Orlesian. “ _De rien._ Don’t make me regret this.”

Dialling quickly, Josephine twists the cord of the rotary phone around her finger. The phone rings three times before it’s picked up. “Go for Jenny.” The accent is thick and Ferelden. Josephine winces, she’s never particular cared for that accent – even on the Knight Commander, it sounds far too harsh on her. She schools her face perfectly blank.

“I need a friend,” she says. It is a familiar pattern; one she was taught when she was still attempting to get aid into the city. The Red Jenny organization was a humanitarian group which focused on the poor refugees coming into the South from the North of Val Royeaux and the outlying occupied territories. “And a trip up north.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Twenty minutes, under her shadow. You know what to look for.” Her contact hangs up.

Josephine sets the phone down into its cradle and thinks a minute. “An insurance policy,” she says. “We need one, don’t we?”

Cassandra raises her arms as though baffled. Leliana just shrugs. “If you want one, Josie.”

“I do.” She picks up the phone once more and dials. Swallowing, waiting for the switchboard to connect her. When the operator answers, coolly informing her that the connection she wishes for doesn’t exist, Josephine bypasses the security control. “Protocol Beta, Six Foxtrot Niner Twenty Kappa.” The operator connects her without another word. The phone rings several times before the phone is picked up. “I need him.”

“He’s busy,” comes the response. “It is Wintersend.”

“12 Rue de Saint Germaine. One Hour.”

“I can make no promises as to his sobriety.” The man rings off.  Josephine hangs up the phone, and pulls Leliana’s device from the back of the receiver.

They’re staring at her like she’s started speaking tongues or doing magic. She supposes it was a bit of an impressive display of her power – but she’s also leaked the Beta Protocol code in front of the _Left Hand of the Divine_ , easily one of the most powerful intelligence operatives in Southern Thedas, if not all of Thedas.

“That’s a dangerous game you’re playing, Josie,” Leliana’s mild tone belies the way her eyes narrow and her stance shifts into one that’s more braced for impact. “Are you sure you trust your friends?”

“Diplomacy is a game of subversion, Leliana,” Josephine replies. She doesn’t trust her contact any further than she can throw him, but she does know his secrets as well as he knows what Josephine would rather keep out of the papers. It’s a mutually assured destruction, which leads to a good working relationship. Besides, he owes her for leading the radio models. She claps her hands together, turning to face them properly. “So, what is the plan since we now have secured transport over the wall?”

Cassandra folds her arms over her chest. She is leaning against the wall, contemplating the statute of Andraste and the burnt down candles as though they are some sort of sign from the Maker himself. Josephine wonders if this is her first time in this office, if this is the most time she’s spent in the presence of the Left Hand. “We should concentrate on neutralizing the threat. That means staying here. Where the act is meant to be committed against Most Holy.”

“She would not want it to come to that,” Leliana answers. She lays out the documentation she photocopied in the Lord Seeker’s office. “These are communications which go back years. I’m sure if these were compared to the documentation we have on file regarding Seeker actions in the Marches and along the Nevarran border we’d see a great deal of overlap. This proves that the Seekers were acting at the behest of Tevinter, rather than the Divine. That is proof for Lucius. We have him, provided we can find him. What Josephine uncovered using the enigma machine tells us where he’ll be. We must get to him, Seeker, and catch him in the act.” She lets out a small laugh, her face lightening. “Maybe we can leak the story to Varric, my way of an apology.”

Cassandra chuckles. “Would the Divine approve?”

“She’d find it advantageous, to the Nevarran peace talks,” Josephine suggests mildly. Josephine certainly would at any rate. “Having a public enemy within her ranks so keen on upsetting the balance of power and tipping the scales in favour of Tevinter? That would play well for the Orlesian and Nevarran representatives at the talks – put Tevinter on edge.”

“Would it not also make her seem weak, and imply she isn’t in control of her own house?” Cassandra asks.

Leliana bends down and pulls a box of bullets from her storage container and begins to load them into a spare clip for her gun. She pulls out the gun Josephine gave her and contemplates it for a moment before selecting a second, smaller clip, and another set of bullets. Josephine realizes then they must have different calibres. She doesn’t know enough about guns to know more. She can shoot them, as any girl from Antiva can, at clay pots in the sky with tremendous accuracy. But this? Hand pistols used for acts of violence? This is Leliana’s world, not Josephine’s.

Checking the sight of the gun Josephine’s given her, Leliana closes one eye and examines the pistol at arm’s length, tilts her wrist. “Justinia understands the realities of this situation and what she means to accomplish through these talks. We won’t be able to affect meaningful change without her.”

“And the idea of a power struggle within the Chantry?” Josephine asks.

Leliana looks up, and her smile is a viscous smear across her face: dangerous. “Those with immense power often rise to the top on stairs constructed of the bodies of lesser foes.”

Josephine clicks her tongue. “So be it.” She doesn’t like it, but it is what must be done. “Cassandra should stay here.”

“What?” The taller woman pushes off the wall and scowls, looking to Leliana for a contrasting opinion. “Why would I—”

Cutting her off, Josephine presses on. “You should stay here, neutralize your peers, remove them from play. Do not kill them, as their testimony will help to seal Lucius’s fate, but make sure that they will not carry out whatever orders they receive. Leliana and I can go North and take care of Lucius, stop this thing before it goes any further.” Josephine checks her watch. “You have nearly two hours to get to all the appointed locations – which I assume we found?”

Leliana nods. “They’re points around the square, where, if I had to make a choice, I would position snipers with mid-range scopes.”

“I’m not a sniper,” Cassandra points out. She looks down at the list, spread out as it is on Leliana’s desk. “None of these men are, either.”

Josephine’s eyes flit to Leliana, because on that second night, when all was said and done, Leliana regaled Josephine with stories of learning how to shoot as a child. Leliana is the sniper – and she’s _good_. “Do you think there may be a fifth?”

“It would make sense – pick four loyal soldiers and position them where they could do damage. It looks like a home-grown plot, especially if…yes, all of these men are Nevarran or have ties to that country.”

“You just know, off of the top of your head?” Cassandra’s tone is dubious.

“It is my business to know, Seeker.” Leliana answers simply. “As it is your business to know how to best put down a rebellion. We all have our roles to play.” Sighing, she runs a tired hand through her hair. In the bright overhead lights of Leliana’s office, the fatigue she’s so carefully hidden with make-up and bravado flakes away to reveal the exhaustion underneath.  Josephine feels it too, she’s weary already and they have hours to go yet. “We will go over the wall, neutralize Lucius if we can, but be back before Conclave breaks. You’re meant to go over to the north tower, yes?”

Cassandra nods.

“Bring a rifle with you, something decent with a good scope and a second one if you don’t mind. The weather tomorrow is meant to be clear and cloudless. The sun will rise to our backs, allowing us a good chance – if we’re lucky – to identify a fifth if there is one. If so, I will neutralize them.”

“Will the radios work?” Cassandra asks. Her expression, Josephine notices, has turned from one full of trepidation to a grim resolve. Her jaw is set and her hands are in her jacket pocket.

“Unless there is interference. They should.” Leliana draws her overcoat off and holsters both guns into the shoulder holster. She rolls her shirt sleeves up and loosens her tie before pulling a pair of black gloves from her back pocket. She tugs them on, and then shrugs the coat back on. She looks more like she’s coming from a party than going to one now, Josephine thinks, when really the party is only just beginning.

Leliana tips her head thoughtfully toward the devotional in the corner and lights a cigarette. “Josie, you have a ride for us?”

“I do.”

“Good.” Leliana says. She sweeps her radio into her pocket and moves to put the earpiece into her ear. “We should go to the meeting place.”

“Sister,” Cassandra says, and there’s something which wavers in her voice as she speaks. It sounds almost like a need to ask something which cannot be put into words. Josephine watches as the fine line of her neck strain with unreleased tension and her throat bob as she swallows hotly. It beautiful, Josephine thinks, but pushes the thought away. She watches Cassandra gesture toward the statue of Andraste. “Would you?”

“I am but a lay sister,” Leliana says quietly. “I cannot offer you any more than that blessing.”

“We are going into holy battle, are we not?” Cassandra’s smile is wry. “I believe we should be blessed.”

“Josie?” Leliana questions.

Josephine is hardly religious, but she sinks down to the floor beside Cassandra. The heat of Leliana’s hand presses against her side, trailing down her arm to rest at the small of her back as Leliana kneels beside them. The prayer she says is short, but the candles sparkle to light with a flick of her wrist and her cigarette lighter: it is an offering – a light in the shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I've written the Grand Cathedral to be a strange combination of the Vatican (and functioning similarly to it as presented in various works of Fiction in terms of like, office space) and Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Looking at the official art, it appears a though Notre Dame was a source of inspiration for the DA developers. 
> 
> \- Arrondis is short for _arrondissements municipaux_ , or administrative districts, which is how the city is divided into recognizable areas.


End file.
